“Maybe love isn’t something that comes full circle. It just ebbs and flows, in and out, just like the people in our lives.”

I finally caved into reading a cult favorite, Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us. While contemporary romance is not a genre I frequent nor enjoy very much, I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t enjoy the romance scenes; I thought the dialogue was often too corny and unrealistic. However, Hoover was able to creatively and sensitively navigate a delicate theme and produce a work that was engaging, not overly distressing, and on a topic that isn't often touched on in fiction books. We are reminded of how much can happen in so little time, and how somethings are irreversible.

@ehatss_fit and I read this book together and we both did a double take during the first domestic violence scene. We went into the book without any preconceptions, so the heaviness of one of the main themes caught us off guard. Sometimes we want to so badly believe that the world and certain people are good, we blind ourselves from realities and vices. The real shocker for me was the Authors Note at the end of the book- the issue of domestic violence was something she had seen a family member suffer through, and she also saw the same person recognize the despicable situation and have the strength and ability to step away. However, what I walked away learning is that not everyone's situation is the same; regardless of how "strong" someone is, not everyone can walk away, not everyone wants to walk away. The book shows us how much is out of our control. How we can know what is best, how we can learn from others' experience and be different, how we can try refrain ourselves from being in certain situations, and yet still find ourselves facing exactly what we were trying to avoid. Although the main character was able to “end” the pattern “with us”, that doesn’t mean everyone else has the same opportunity to.