Is "It Ends With Us" a Bad Book?! I Had to Find Out for Myself (W/ SPOILERS)

Trigger Warning: The book and this review contains themes relating to domestic abu$3. Please proceed with caution or skip this post altogether.

I don't usually decide not to read an author's works because of who he/she is, but I do have limits on certain beliefs. A few months ago, I read and heard about controversies surrounding the author and I decided I didn't want to read any more of her works - I have read Reminders of Him before I got to that point and I did not find anything problematic about it. 

However, just a couple days ago, I had a good look at my Audible library again and found that I did purchase the audiobook for one of her most controversial works. I honestly think I got it out of the hype in the past and just forgot that it was in my library. Audible has changed their return policy so it was too late for me to return it and I didn't just want to put it to waste so I went ahead and listened to it.

But before anything else...

A little disclaimer. This review is scary for me to write knowing how much loved the author is by her fans that there have been attacks to those who have very publicly expressed their dislike for the book. I have decided to temporarily pause all of my preconceived notions about the author simply because I did not want to waste an expensive audiobook. With that, I am writing this review with the same outlook as all other books. If there are thoughts that you do not agree with and you feel the need to defend the author, please just don't. There's no point so let's not waste each other's energy. We all like different things and I have my own preferences as you do have yours. Most importantly, I am not a victim of D.A. but I have known and witnessed it happen to other people. However, I know I still would not be able to fully emphatise with the victims and for that I am truly sorry.

Now let's get on to what I think.

Did the book romanticise DA?

One of the most common comment that I came across on the internet was that the book romanticised DA. While Lily's mother did not do anything about her husband's actions and Lily forgave her own husband more often than one would like, I honestly did not see much romantisation of DA in the book. What I did saw was a reality that many abu$3d women go through specifically the thought process that they have to take when deciding whether or not to walk away. I do understand that giving second chances to abu$!ve behaviour is never right and it is much easier to say when you are not in that situation, but as much as it hurts to admit - it does happen. Some would say it's because of love, others were just too dependent on their husbands to even take a step back or others would not want their children to grow up in a broken home. I did try to listen with the intent of spotting this romantisation, but I did not see much of it other than the many second chances given to the abu$3rs.

What was the reading experience like?

I did not know until the end of the book (author's note) that this was largely based on the author's own experience with her biological father. Reading the book did at times did not feel that it was fictional. I thought that it was just the lack of art in its writing. There were so many lines that sounded like the lines from books like Twilight or 50 Shades - NO, that is not a compliment. Oddly enough, it was not the abu$!ve situations that I found off-putting. It was the other things like the weird (ehm illegal) age differences, Lily's hypocrisy that she will never sleep with Ryle and just simply the names in the book. My, oh my, the names were weird in this one. I never thought the name Ryle was weird until I heard it a thousand times in an audiobook. There were also odd scenarios that were in the book but I felt like they didn't add any value being there. One specific character/scene I could recall was the one with Lily's roommate. It was wasted minutes on that one.

I did not get any chance to visualise anything on this book - not the rooms, not the situations, not their characters because the book did not describe anything to me. It told a story, albeit not a very good one, but it failed in many ways to help me connect anything on it.

It was not a boring read, it just was not anything significant.

Is it a bad book?

I wouldn't call it a bad book but it also does not come close to being good either. I am pretty much generous with my ★★ for this and that is mainly because I was not in misery listening to it. It was also not shallow. It was not a bad book, but all it gave was a very soft blow of a story that will make you feel sorry for the characters just enough. The characters themselves are quite tolerable.

I think it is safe to say that I don't get much of the hype around this book. I don't understand how it got there. I do hope the fans do not come hard on me for this one, but even without all the controversies, I still don't think this was a good one.

Will I read the second book?

Nope. I was curious enough to Google whether Atlas and Lily ended up together, but not curious enough to put myself through an entire novel again.