The follow-up to Colleen Hoover’s best-selling book It Ends With Us which became a BookTok sensation, is titled It Starts With Us. After It Ends With Us, the sequel starts right away and guides the reader through the complexities of life following divorce and domestic abuse. The reader can witness Atlas and Lily’s love as they negotiate divorce, find relatives, and begin a new life after abuse in It Starts With Us, which is a lighter read than its predecessor. Hoover effectively portrays a “second chance” relationship that switches between Atlas and Lily’s perspectives. It is necessary to first read It Ends With Us to properly comprehend the significance of some of the seemingly little occurrences in It Starts With Us.
It’s obvious that Hoover believes in her readership and doesn’t steer clear of difficult subjects in any of her books; It Starts With Us most certainly does not present a straightforward view of love. Hoover makes the difficulty of relationships evident while toying with the romantic notion of a reunited first love: You always have to work toward love. It Starts with Us frequently offers compelling narratives that feel true to the characters’ lives, showcasing both the beautiful and the ugly.
In contrast to most sequels, It Starts With Us didn’t feel drawn out and contained enough action and important topics to stand alone as a standalone narrative. Even though it is not a stand-alone, the plotlines in this book feel new and distinct from It Ends With Us, subtly building the story.
At first, toeing the line between wanting to move on in her love life and respecting her ex-husband, Ryle, Lily gradually realizes what she deserves in a romantic relationship and makes the necessary changes to have a better life after their divorce at the end of It Ends With Us.
Along with exploring the intricacy of love, Hoover also examines hate, challenging the readers’ perceptions of good and wrong. Hoover successfully demonstrates that there is no real “antagonist” in life by letting her readers empathize with the villains in her book.
Every antagonist in It Starts With Us, including both ex-lovers and ex-mothers, adopted a murky, ambiguous role of victim and enabler. These complicated people were misinformed or mistreated, which caused them to feel hurt and turn on Lily and Atlas. Because they lacked Lily and Atlas’s resources, the “antagonists” in the book were difficult to detest. Despite their efforts to start a new relationship, they continued to engage in violent relationships. The book never depicts them negatively; instead, it demonstrates how these characters might not fit into the lives of those healing from abuse. If given the right assistance, the antagonists in It Starts With Us could become the heroes.
In It Starts With Us, the reality of relationships is explored: Love takes labor; falling in love is simple. Also, every relationship has certain flaws; the question is which ones we are ready to accept. Everyone reinterprets relationships while getting older, possibly to mirror the affection of their parents or a kind gesture they experienced when they were twelve. Some forms of love, like the conventional parental kind, come all at once, while others are only felt briefly.
In general, It Starts With Us is a lovely book to finish the tale that was begun in It Ends With Us. The book shows readers that there may be happiness in frightful new beginnings and gently addresses some of the trauma that plagued the first book. The story of second chance love in It Starts With Us successfully continues Lily’s journey despite lacking the emotional depth that made its predecessor so potent.