Initially, I was skeptical of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling book “It Ends With Us”. As I opened the first page, I was nervous the novel would be just another cliche romance read. Would my predictions hold true?

“It Ends With Us” has been adored by a wide age range and is touted as one of the best romance books of all time by BookTok (TikTok’s home for book lovers).

With “internet famous” books, I sometimes find that after hearing others praise the novel, my expectations are set so high the book becomes underwhelming to read. To my surprise, this was far from the case with this novel.

The story follows 23-year-old Lily Bloom who moved to Boston for a fresh start. Early in the story, she meets Ryle Kincaid and after a series of unseemly encounters, they fall in love. But as is typical of Hoover’s books, Kincaid and Bloom’s perfect relationship takes a turn for the worst when Bloom reunites with her first love, Atlas Corrigan.

Despite my surface-level description, perhaps the best aspect of this novel is that it has a deeper plot than a typical romance novel. I am not an avid romance reader as the plotlines often feel repetitive to me, however, Hoover’s off-script take on romance brings valuable lessons and other important themes into the story. 

In an interview with Amazon Books, Hoover explained that the purpose of writing about abusive relationships in the book was to educate young people and help them make the right choices in their lives. 

She said she was reluctant to write a book without the typical happy ending that she was used to, but after publishing “It Ends With Us” she realized the value of those books.

Critics of the novel have shared that “It Ends With Us” romanticizes abusive relationships, and after reading the novel I completely understand why some people feel that way. Hoover writes about the abusive character in a way that makes you sympathize with him and grow to love him as the novel progresses. 

However, her writing of the abusive character puts you in the shoes of the protagonist and truly enables you to understand how, in the moment, an abusive relationship may be hard to identify. 

This is a perfect example of how beautifully character development is portrayed in the novel. From cover to cover, the characters learn and change. Early in the novel, the protagonist is often unsure of herself and seems to rethink and doubt her decisions. At the end, you can clearly see the mentality shift as she realizes that her opinions and ideas don’t need to be validated by others.

Hoover also avoids the typical protagonist-antagonist relationship and plays more with morally gray characters, which I found really refreshing. Often, a character I had grown to love would make a questionable decision and I had to wrestle with whose “side” I was on. This was even true of supporting characters.

Hoover’s character relationships emphasize the novel’s most popular quote, “There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.”

As is shown by the countless Google Books reviews describing the novel as “an emotional rollercoaster” and “the kind of book that grabs onto your heart”, the raw emotion woven in just about every line of the novel is undoubtedly what kept many readers and myself enthralled in this book. 

All in all, “It Ends With Us” may be a romance novel, but is far from just a love story. After a continuous and uninterrupted four-hour read, I can confirm that the crowd rallying around this novel is by no accident.