By Christine Yunn-Yu Sun
It Ends with Us, by American author Colleen Hoover, was published in August 2016.
By 2019, it had sold more than one million copies worldwide.
Thanks to the #BookTok community, the novel experienced a new surge in popularity since 2021.
As of April 2024, it had been reviewed by over three million readers on GoodReads while boasting over one billion tags on TikTok.
Is the novel worth the hype?
Absolutely, considering the author’s intent to explore themes of domestic violence and emotional abuse.
The story’s first-person narrator Lily grew up in Maine, traumatised by her father’s frequent violence against her mother.
Alarmingly, not only would her mother refuse to leave the marriage, but in public she would deny any abuse ever happened.
Lily vowed never to tolerate violence.
When she moves to Boston and falls in love with Ryle – and then experiences physical violence by him – she is determined to do the right thing, even when it means their child will grow up in a single-parent household.
Lily makes a crucial point when she reflects: “People spend so much time wondering why the women don’t leave. Where are all the people who wonder why the men are even abusive? Isn’t that where the only blame should be placed?”
The question is thought-provoking, shedding light on the prevalence of gender biases and victim blaming in our society.
The author further emphasises that every domestic violence case is unique, and nothing is black-and-white as is often conveniently simplified by outsiders.
Another important point is this: “Just because someone hurts you doesn’t mean you can simply stop loving them. It’s not a person’s actions that hurt the most. It’s the love. If there was no love attached to the action, the pain would be a little easier to bear.”
As much as they are an adorable couple, Ryle’s love for Lily cannot and should not be seen as an excuse for his actions.
In this sense, the novel may be a critique of the kind of blind, selfless devotion that is often portrayed in romance stories as a cure for every flawed relationship.
Indeed, as much as It Ends with Us is promoted as a romance novel, the happiness-ever-after is for Lily and someone else.
More importantly, comparing Lily with her mother and her best friend Allysa – who happens to be Ryle’s sister – it is evident that women today are much more aware and assertive of their rights to claim and exercise their freedoms.
It gives us hope that domestic violence is a solvable social problem, with attention drawn to not just helping the victims but also interventions for the perpetrators.
