One of New York’s best-selling authors Colleen Hoover wrote her most popular book “It Ends With Us”, released Aug. 3, 2016. Colleen Hoover wrote “It Ends With Us” after her parent’s abusive relationship. In 2024, “It Ends With Us” hit theaters Aug. 9, bringing many Colleen Hoover fans to watch the anticipated movie. Lily Bloom – played by Blake Lively – moves to Boston to open up her dream flower shop and meets neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid – played by Justin Baldoni – who becomes abusive to Lily later in their relationship. Later in the book, she runs into her old high school lover, Atlas Corrigan – played by Brandon Sklenar – jeopardizing her relationship with Ryle. Throughout the book, Lily is torn between the flame that still exists between her and Atlas and keeping her relationship with Ryle even though he is abusive towards her. 

Movie: 

When the movie released, the outcome of the movie was disappointing. The actors are much older than the characters are meant to be portrayed and look nothing like the book characters. Blake Lively plays a 26-year-old Lily while being 36 in real life. While she does pull off a younger character,  I feel like a 10-year age gap is a big jump. Actor Justin Baldoni is 40 years old in real life and plays a 30-year-old Ryle Kincaid, who’s 28 in the book. Many of the scenes from the book that gave it an edge, did not make an appearance in the movie. In the book, Lily saw Ryle’s abusiveness and would continuously give warnings, but she felt that he could change and when he didn’t, she left him. In the movie, she is in denial about his abuse and it takes her longer to realize that he won’t change finally. The movie creates a good experience and meets some of the expectations, but it did lack a few things that would have made it a much better experience for the expectant audience. The movie did a good job of covering the underlying message of domestic abuse and how hard it can be to move around it. The movie and actors both do a good job of exploring the ideas of abuse and domestic violence in a relationship.   

Book:  

The book created a better experience overall, which made connecting with the characters and going deeper into the emotions easier.  Multiple characters were cut from the movie starting with Lily’s roommate, who also worked for Lily at the flower shop before moving to be with her boyfriend, but Ryle’s sister Alyssa – played by Jenny Slate in the movie – still works for Lily at the flower shop and ends up becoming her best friend. Another character that didn’t make it into the movie was Devin, Lily’s gay best friend she worked with before her flower shop, along with being Lily’s date to Alyssa’s party to make Ryle jealous. The movie not only missed characters but also key scenes. Lily’s diary entries to Ellen Degeneres played a big part in the book that helped us learn the past of Lily and Atlas as teenagers, and how they made it through their respective traumas together, along with key parts of her past about her parent’s abusive relationship. Some of the most famous lines in the book that were cut from the movie, including “Just keep swimming,” and “You can stop swimming now Lily, we finally reached the shore.” These sayings originate from Ellen Degeneres’ part in “Finding Nemo” as the character Dory. These quotes play a big part in Atlas and Lily’s relationship and how they found their way and didn’t give up, and the movie just skips over it. In one of the final scenes with Ryle, he asks to read a newspaper article out loud about Atlas and his restaurant, named after a saying she and Atlas used to say. The name of Atlas’s restaurant was originally called Bib’s which stood for “Better in Boston.” This is the same saying on the magnet on Lily’s fridge that Atlas gave her, but in the movie the restaurant is named “Root”, which did play a part in their past, but doesn’t make as big of an impact as “Better in Boston” does. 

Overall, the book was better than the movie because it went into more detail about Lily and her past and how it affected her even in her present-day life. It also showed her journey from getting herself out of the abusive relationship with Ryle even though she still loved him. I would give the movie a six out of ten stars because even though it didn’t meet all of the points in the book, it still got the same message as the book.