This is a one-and-done situation… The backstory involves a few things—limited shelf estate on the bookshelves of my favorite Indie bookstore (Colleen Hoover books hogging entire sets of shelves), TikTok which has brought hoards of younger readers back to books, a buddy read with a family member that went awry, and my utter frustration with the lack of craft, meaning and purpose for this narrative as a whole. By the way, I don’t read any sub genre of romance even the twisted kind like It Ends With Us.

It Ends With Us is a story about discovering and breaking generational patterns, abuse, female oppression, a Cinderella complex and some tired tropes with a twist—girl meets boy, a meet cute, unearthed PTSD, and a rock-a-bye-baby situation. In terms of audience, the feel I get is that the work is aimed toward a tweener group ranging from back-end of high school, through college and into the twenty-something’s. There are definitely older readers…

A young woman’s father dies, she comes into money and quits her senior marketing position to become a Girl Boss and open her own flower shop for people who hate flowers. As Girl Boss is tinkering with setting up shop an older than her, financially established, and privileged woman who is bored with her life and not yet pregnant wanders in and makes herself indispensable and becomes “instant employee.” Instant Employee opens the window for her brother who possesses favorable criteria—looks, profession, job, wealth, and mysterious edginess. He’s gonna be the Prince Charming that Girl Boss doesn’t know she needs to have a story in order to wake up from the nightmare that was her childhood which has unknowingly kept her from seeking a committed relationship. This concludes the “Meet Cute” portion of the story.

Once Girl Boss and Prince Charming sync up their lives, there are lots of “accidents” that bring injury to Girl Boss and are caused by Prince Charming (who by the way is also a neurosurgeon). Add to this clumsy, awkward, male-centered sex scenes that are embarrassing to read because they are a combination of cliche and violence (really just unnecessary and does nothing to advance the narrative). If you extract these scenes from the story sadly there’s not much there. The characters can’t experience emotional and physical intimacy due to repressed trauma and so they make a baby instead and promise not to mess up her life either. There’s a marriage, emotional discovery, a baby, a divorce, a post-marital friendship sort of… This concludes the Rock-a-bye Baby portion of the story. The baby doesn’t fall by the way…

There’s also a love interest who Girl Boss knew during the early traumatic years of her childhood and he became homeless. We’ll call him Homeless Chef. Young Girl Boss saves him by offering him food, clothing, shelter and Homeless Chef offers Girl Boss emotional safety and support due to the home situation caused by Girl Boss’ abusive father and victimized, paralyzed mother. As often happens life sends Girl Boss and Homeless Chef on different paths and directions away from their endless love.

Epistolary moments enter the narrative by way of old letters written by Girl Boss to Ellen Degeneres— the only person Girl Boss can be honest with. Really this reads like a ripoff of “Are You There God It’s Me Margaret” and sadly about as mature. However, the letters act as a vehicle for unearthing the repressed childhood that brings Girl Boss to her relational impasses which fragments time and toggling back to the present moment is like taking an Amtrak train from Chicago to Michigan—herky jerky to say the least…

I won’t weave it all together. I won’t entirely spoil the end. I will tell you that my GenZ family member bailed after 50 pages and I wished I had too. I just wanted to understand the phenomena of this author who’d probably do well but not as well without TikTok and Netflix… This book kind of ties into the GenZ raw themes they enjoyed before and during the pandemic in all the online and digital ways they remained entertained. There’s a baseline acceptance of violence, there’s blaming the parents for everything wrong in their lives, there’s the unrealistic trajectory to success, dropping out, rebuilding/rebranding, and more success in no time at all. It’s just ok. It’s not a 5 or 3 star read for me. This book is a solid 2. Participating in the readership offers a social equivalent to an online community ultimately becoming a data grab and guaranteed audience when the next writer’s strike happens in 3 years… Hoover can put the pen to page and try out a lot of genres BUT can she tell a story or can she simply turn pages? These are different things and time, TikTok, streaming and striking will have to tell…

Kudos to Hoover’s mom who permitted the telling of this tale due to parts being drawn directly from her mom’s life. Hoover has a long career ahead of her and maybe she rose too fast and too soon. Would she have been this popular without TikTok and a pandemic sending us all online grasping for connection or meaning? Not sure, but life is short and there are books to read that teach me and expand my world view and Hoover’s work does not do this for me. Hopefully, for someone who needs help and/or endures domestic violence will find catharsis in, It Ends With Us. I am just glad that the book ended and am envious of my GenZ family member who had the tenacity to DNF a book that didn’t meet their standard. If you read or don’t finish, enjoy!