The novel "End with us" by Colleen Hoover is about Lily Bloom's love life and her personal development and maturation. In the novel, we are introduced to two more characters: Atlas Corrigan, her childhood sweetheart, and a new love interest Ryan Kincaid. Throughout the book the story of her abusive home and her fall into an abusive relationship and how she attempts to escape that relationship is revealed. This novel and its characters evoked a wide range of emotions and thoughts in me. It led me to contemplate and question many things I thought I knew about myself and abusive relationships as a whole. I was thrown into the shoes of a character going through something I had never experienced before, and it altered my perception of myself in terms of how I would behave in that situation versus how I had always thought I would react. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay This novel begins with Lily on top of a roof remembering her father's funeral when her thoughts are interrupted by a man bursting onto the roof and suddenly throwing a chair. Lily describes him as beautiful. He later reveals that his name is Ryle and he is a neurosurgeon. They begin to share truths with each other, a concept that is repeated a lot throughout the book. Lily and Ryle part ways on the roof after he's called to work, but that's not the last one. In the next chapters we will learn more about Lily's passion for gardening and how Ryle somehow manages to creep into her mind and life every now and then. This shows the development of their relationship and Ryle's personal maturity with his mindset towards love. He went from “The thought of marriage repulses me… love has never attracted me. It was always more of a burden than anything” (pages 22-23) not being able to get her out of his mind and eventually falling in love with her. Simply put, I felt the same way about Ryle as Lily. I too fell in love with his charming personality and the effort he made to be a good boyfriend for Lily. This is exactly what Colleen wanted. She wanted us to put ourselves in Lily's shoes and go through what she goes through to better understand how these types of relationships work. I remember when I started reading "It All Ends With Us" I saw Ryle as a bit aggressive, impulsive and unprofessional, considering he was smoking a joint while training to be a doctor. Throughout the novel, he confused Lily and played with her emotions. But as I became more invested in the plot and saw his dedication to having Lily, Ryle grew on me, and I was all for it. When the first accident happened I was shocked. I remember picking up my phone and texting my friend (who had already read the book) in complete surprise. After everything Lily went through in her childhood, she didn't deserve this. But when Lily decided to stay with him I supported her. I wanted to believe it was a one-time thing. When I look back now, I'm shocked that I thought such a thing. Like a girl who always swore that if a boy put his hands on her she would go away and fall in love with that situation in a book. It doesn't even make sense to me. Atlas, her childhood sweetheart, is mentioned throughout the novel, in several encounters she has with him but especially when Lily reads his old journals that she kept in Maine. The second meeting they had was when Lily and Ryle had dinner with her sister and her boyfriend at a restaurant called "Bibs", which was soon revealed to be the restaurant ofAtlas. When dessert is brought out, Atlas comes to their table to ask about their food. “Atlas's eyes fall on the cut on my eye. The bandage wrapped around Ryle's hand. Back to my eye… his jaw hardens and he says nothing and walks away” (page 195). Atlas heard and saw in his eyes the things Lily's father did to her mother. He was there when Lily's father almost raped her mother and protected Lily from getting hurt. Lily told him that she thought her mother deserved better and that she couldn't believe she hadn't left him yet. Atlas was shocked to see her first love in the same situation she swore she would never get to. He confronted her in the bathroom and told her to leave him but Lily defended Ryle. Atlas compares Lily to her mother, trying to make her understand what she is doing. The second accident happened and I was as shocked as the first time. At that moment I no longer wanted her to forgive him, I had enough, she deserved better than him but once again an excuse came. Ryle tells Lily about his traumatizing past and my heart couldn't help but break for “little” Ryle. The Ryle who had to pay the consequences of his parents' ignorance. At the beginning of the novel, one of Ryles' real truths was how he had to watch a child die because he and his brother found a gun in his parents' bedroom. The younger brother was holding it in his hand and it exploded by accident. Only after learning about Ryle's traumatic past do we understand how much it affected him. “It's going to destroy him for life, that's what it's going to do” (page 18). I found myself justifying his behavior. Once again I let myself fall in love with that act, just like Lily and thousands of other women have. The fact that everything is almost too perfect at this point makes me nervous, waiting for something horrible to happen again. As the saying goes, "good things don't last." My suspicions turned out to be correct. It happened again and my first thought was for Lily to run as far away as possible. I wasn't falling for it again. I no longer cared about his PTSD and anger issues. What he did had no justification. It could have caused her serious harm. At the same time, my heart was also breaking. This situation gives the feeling of losing hope, of giving up on Ryle. They both knew this situation couldn't be resolved. “Just because someone hurts you doesn't mean you can just stop loving them. It's not a person's actions that hurt the most. It's love. If there were no love attached to the action, the pain would be a little easier to bear” (page 321). The last incident with Ryle was the most difficult and mentally taxing in this book. Ryle reads an article about Atlas' restaurant, discovers that the restaurant is named after him, and finds and reads his old journals. He discovers the meaning of the tattoo on his collarbone and Atlas's phone number in the phone case. He became furious and hit her on the head, bit her and almost raped her. When he woke up from that horrible night, the first thing he did was call Atlas. “I hate myself because the day he put his number there, I opened it and looked at it. I hate myself because, deep down, I knew there was a possibility that one day I would need it. So I memorized it (268-269) “Atlas gave her a place to stay while things calmed down with Ryle and until he left on his journey.” She later discovers that she is pregnant with Ryles' child. He was faced with so many thoughts and possible decisions about his and Ryle's future. When we discussed abusive relationships at school, I always said that those situations are much more complicated than.