November 1, 2024

If you’re not familiar with Colleen Hoover, imagine her as the Taylor Swift of the reading world. Her gut-wrenching stories have shaped her career. She was famous on BookTok a couple of years ago with famous titles such as “It Ends With Us” and even the sequel “It Starts With Us.” 

Colleen Hoover is even popular at our own Copley High School (she was featured in Drumbeat last year). I will admit that I am a “CoHo” stan for the few titles that I have dabbled in. There is no book of hers that will stay in style for longer than a few years, though. It’s fast fashion. No book other than “It Ends With Us,” that is. So what makes this novel so special? 

When it comes to this story, Hoover uses her own upbringing to influence the plot. While the novel was predictable at times, it shed light on victims of domestic violence and its themes are powerful. 

The novel is meaningful. The film version is not. 

In “It Ends With Us” (2024), the film based on the novel, Blake Lively plays protagonist Lily Blossom Bloom (ironic right?). Justin Baldoni plays Ryle Kincaid, Bloom’s abusive partner. In the film, Bloom moves to Boston to finally achieve her childhood dream of opening a flower shop. She meets Kincaid in a terrible, cringy meet-n’-greet on a rooftop.

We are shown what looks like a perfect relationship between Bloom and Kincaid, who get married in short order before a darker side of Kincaid begins to appear. When young (supposedly) Bloom finds out that she is pregnant, she has to make the choice of leaving or staying with—and making excuses for—her abusive husband. 

We can’t leave out Bloom’s first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Skelenar), who also had a dream in Boston. Atlas is still in love with Lily and she has never lost her feelings for him. This is made quite clear. 

The generational cycle of domestic abuse in Bloom’s family is part of the many layers to this story. She always said that she would not end up in the same situation as her mother, who was abused by Bloom’s father all through Bloom’s childhood. The whole first hour is supposed to be a rom-com, though, (and not a good one, either!), in an attempt to help the audience get to know Kinkaid’s background and childhood in hopes of justifying the manipulation, gaslighting and physical abuse he implements on Bloom. The film tries to make the viewers fall in love with Ryle the same way Lily does, and he is purposefully rendered as a sympathetic character so that the viewer is caught off-guard when the abuse starts. The film production is unsuccessful in this effort, however, so the powerful impact achieved in the novel becomes uncertain and difficult to grasp in the film. 

I’d like to have a word with whoever cast these roles for this film. In the novel the characters are in their 20s: it is fresh, young love. In the film, the producers cast old, irrelevant actors. And don’t even get me started on the music production, which damages the serious tone by playing Birdy’s “Skinny Love” while teenage Lily (Isabela Ferrer) and teenage Atlas (Alex Neustaedter) are making love. Like…how can I take that seriously? I won’t even get into how the music of Taylor Swift and Lana Del Ray absolutely slandered the scenes it appears in. At times I was laughing when I shouldn’t have been. 

This film had the potential to be big news but instead it feels cheap, on the same level as a Lifetime film, and felt like an SNL act. If, in another world, the cast and crew were dedicated to making a faithful adaptation of the novel instead of turning Lily Blossom Bloom into a “girl boss” in a mislabeled rom-com, then I’m sure that this film would have been worth my valuable time. 

Nevertheless, I was the girl crying after reading the novel, and then crying after watching this. 

There are whispers of the novel’s sequel, “It Starts With Us” being put into film production. I truly hope this will be made in a more heartfelt, truthful way. Otherwise, JUST DON’T MAKE IT, because as a young female the meaning of the book (NOT the film) will be held in my heart forever and the film’s producers failed to portray it in a meaningful way. 

Please, let it end here.