Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

By Colleen Hoover

This is the first in a two book series:

1. It Ends With Us
2. It Starts With US

When I bought this book last year, I was in the Charleston airport coming home from a girls’ weekend and wanted a light romance to fill the few hours in the air. By the time we landed, I had finished the book, but it was fundamentally not a light romance. Well, it was…until it wasn’t. As with most Colleen Hover books, she deftly pulls you in and then makes you exceptionally uncomfortable. 

I fall into the “this book was good” camp – but not because of Ryle or Atlas. This book felt important in the genre; it flips the script and delivers a unique happily ever after.

This dual-timeline story of Lily’s life is told both in the present and through her journals as a teenager. In the present, she is swept off her feet by handsome surgeon Ryle. He is the ultimate book boyfriend – the handsome, successful guy who doesn’t believe in love until he finds “her” – we’ve all read that book. In parallel, you learn of the tender first love between Lily and a homeless, down-on-his-luck teen named Atlas. The two stories intersect when Lilly and Ryle encounter Atlas unexpectedly, and we learn hard truths about each of their true characters.

I hesitate to share more of the plot for those who have not read it because not knowing is part of the reward of this book.