It Starts with Us... Read this before you start it.

“If half of all marriages end in divorce, that would mean half of every set of vows ever made have ended up broken. How do we ensure we’re not one of the couples who becomes a statistic?... Half the time? Fifty-fifty? One out of two?” (Hoover, 241-2).

Image from: Goodreads

I hate to use Colleen’s words to describe my impressions of It Starts with Us, but the second book—the tying of loose ends from It Ends with Us, left me feeling one for two. Hoover’s second installment was well written, considerate of the story and did check some of the boxes that I was dreaming about following the conclusion of the first book, but even as Hoover puts it in the acknowledgements, maybe Atlas’ and Lily’s story was best left up to the imagination. She described her hesitation that “It Ends with Us is the one book I have been adamant that I would never write a sequel for. I felt like it ended where it needed to end, and I didn’t want to put Lily through more stress…[but] I quickly realized how much I needed to see Lily and Atlas happy and well. For everyone who asked for more, thank you.” To me, this felt a little like a cop out. Her about face feels influenced by the overwhelming success of the first book, and in the storyline there seems to have been no point to a continuation of the story in the way that this book was written. Let’s get into why it felt that way--from a reasoned textual standpoint. (Spoilers up ahead!)

The first book ended with a chance encounter of Lily and Atlas that left us wanting more. In each of their character structures, Lily is freshly divorced and taking ownership of her life choices and Atlas is in a stable and successful restaurant business which is rapidly expanding. Of course, we’re looking for Atlas to be the romance that we’ve never had, but he brings the obvious conclusion to Lily’s story: stability and consistency post abusive breakup. He’s present, adoring, desiring and patient with Lily as she handles having a child with her abuser and all the complications that move forth… What more can you ask for?

However, I think that it is fair for us to ask for more. Lily is written to be a character of such complexity, uniqueness and intrigue that men fight over her, yet she feels passive to that love, never returning it in any grand way to her partner. She’s still stuck in the same nearly physically abusive situation and lacks power and ownership over her safety or that of her daughter. She’s at his whim because of the physical and economic power that he maintains over her, which I believe lost the complexity of what can occur in an abusive situation while attempting romanticize the storyline. The first novel was intriguing because it got perhaps some elements of the abuse right, but in this novel, it seems half-lived.

In the same breath, for Atlas, who discovers that he has a younger brother, the motions of meeting with one’s abusive mother to save a little brother is also slightly contrived. Josh is a preteen who is written to not fully understand his situation, as well as incorporate a slightly sassy, youthful experience to trauma. We should like him as a character, and he might have somewhat of an arc—learning to trust Atlas and refusing to see his father anymore, but there still is very little redemption arc for Atlas, a character who also was controlled for so long by his abusive father whom he escaped. When Josh finds a family, it seems that Atlas fails to learn from his little brother in finally facing his trauma and settling it for himself. Go therapy!

More interestingly, It Ends with Us was a story of Lily escaping the cycle of abuse for that of her daughter. It was intriguing in its complexity and attempt at revealing many of the internal struggles for victims and female parents in domestic violence situations, while also sprinkled with a fantasy romance. In this second installment, I would caution that Atlas is not the end-all-be-all for women seeking comfortable domestic partners. I think that following the first story, Hoover attempted to place Atlas in contrast with Ryle—in some ways to demonstrate that he would treat Lily better. Yet, I believe the treatment that we watched from Atlas was bare minimum expectations of a non-abusive, supportive, and loving partner. I don’t believe that Lily in the same breath demonstrated any over the top adoring to Atlas either. Both, it seemed, were still living in a fantasy of their parents attempting to not get caught. The premise of incorporating the youthful return of a first love is a rhetorical device, but perhaps doesn’t lend itself to the supporting narrative as well in the second book as it may have in explaining Atlas’ character in the first.

Overall, the story is not a character arc. There is little growth. In fact, I think it may have simply served to tie up loose ends and attempt to draw fiction around what life could have looked like for Lily. As a result, there is not a huge plot drawing the story along, so the routine lives of the characters are flat. In the same way, all of the characters are not seemingly growing--even with the inclusion of Atlas’ newfound brother, who does little to support the storyline of Atlas confronting his demons, because despite being a good father figure, Atlas does very little to grow himself.

That being said, the story was well-written as Colleen Hoover's books are. She just may have missed the mark in her intention, which may have been swayed by her fans and jump to fame with the first novel.