November 2024
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    I feel like Dumbledore drinking that potion and pleading for Harry to kill him so he wouldn't have to go through that torment.

    I made a New Year's promise with my best friend that we would read the number of books corresponding to the month (1 in January, 2 in February, and so on). This idea came from him to help me get back to reading something other than technical books after these last 3 years of college.

    Well, it turns out another friend of mine BEGGED me to read 'it ends with us' by Colleen Hoover, and now I can only believe that SHE FUCKING HATES ME.

    I really can't find words to describe how horrible this reading has been. GOD. And everything gets worse because I work with some patients who are/were victims of abuse (maybe that's why my friend recommended this book to me? I don't know). The author must not have done any research on the subject to write this; everything is treated so superficially and shallowly that it's disrespectful.

    This must be legitimately the worst book I've ever read. I swear, it's definitely the worst.

    Now I'm near the end and struggling to finish, but it's so difficult; everything is so poorly written, cliché, and uninteresting.

    Oh, and Atlas deserves MUCH better.

    by Dear_Professional254

    49 Comments

    1. Totally agree with you – I did not like the book and found it hard to get through. I did read her author’s note and apparently this is based on her mother’s experience, with some of the incidents in the book pulled directly from her life. Reading that note made me like the book 1% more but overall I agree that it was not good.

    2. We get so many Colleen Hoover hate posts that they’ve gotten old, but this post was too funny 😂. Welcome back to reading!

      Hang around here long enough and you’ll get plenty of warnings against certain books with rave reviews and high Goodreads ratings (but don’t feel bad if you like these, everyone’s got opinions and life is too short to care about all of them).

      Out of curiosity: is the challenge having you read twelve books in a month by December? If so, that’s a lot, and don’t feel bad if you don’t make it.

    3. Someone I know was telling me all about Verity and I mostly shrugged. Idk coming from the film world it didn’t seem that crazy. I mean go watch Oldboy for baby’s first fucked up Koren revenge thriller if you want something f’d.

    4. I’m a man that read this for a girl that I really liked. I did not like her anymore by the end of this god forsaken book 😂

    5. Welcome back to reading! I’m sorry you started with such a terrible book, I hope it doesn’t put you off of continuing your reading journey

    6. Man I feel you. I haven’t read this one but did try my best to understand the Colleen Hoover hype by reading Verity and Reminders of Him. HORRIBLE books. Horrible writing. I don’t want to yuck somebody else’s yum, and think it’s great that many people got back into reading through Hoover’s work. But I am bewildered

    7. >Oh, and Atlas deserves MUCH better.

      Had me in the first half not gonna lie

      He was an 18 year old taking advantage of a 15 year old and even came back for one night after moving to a different state to have sex with her on her 16th birthday, masking it as romantic gesture instead of just the day it was no longer statutory rape

      Lily deserved peace and rest.

    8. Thanks OP, I have seen colleen Hoover’s books around in many bookstores. Was almost tempted to read it, but my intuition said i would regret it and you just confirmed it 🤣
      Dodged a bullet there

    9. spottysasquatch on

      I promised some friends I would give CoHo a try. Read *Verity* first, and I’m embarrassed to admit I actually loved it, LOL! Though I think part of the reason I loved it is because I had recently gotten back into reading and was just excited to be doing something I loved again.

      Anyway, then I read *Layla* and it’s one of the top three worst books I have ever read. *It Ends With Us* was the final straw. I will never understand the hype but to each their own!

    10. Dear_Professional254 on

      Updates: I did it, guys! I finished before midnight. The hardest choices require the strongest wills… i guess.

    11. I read this book with a friend together and we both hated it. Its one of the worst books i habe ever read. I dont get the hype

    12. CardiganandTea on

      Omg this post is making me *sing.* It’s so good. Thank you for making me laugh out loud and alleviate the stress causing me insomnia.

      By the way, have you ever been published? Because you are clearly a natural writer.

    13. This is easily the worst book l’ve ever read. The writing is horrendous; just talentless, cheap and flat. It made me hate that I have eyes. It made me hate people. If a genie appeared and gave me one wish, I would use my one wish to make sure this book could never exist.

      As a DV survivor, her oversimplification of a DV relationship is insulting and crass. It’s like she read an article about someone in an abusive relationship and decided she knew enough to write a book about it. It is just all around awful.

      The fact that her main character is a florist named Lily Blossom Bloom who is obsessed with Ellen Degeneres should tell you everything you know about this waste of paper.
      My disdain for this writer runs DEEP.

    14. Colleen Hoover is such a hyped author that I really want to read something, but everytime I hear what that book is about or an opinion about it, it is always bad and about abuse 😂
      It’s still a goal for me this year but I guess it won’t be this book because it sound pretty horrible

    15. lol this book, which I also despised, ironically kicked off my most prolific reading year ever (up to that point) two years ago. I was previously a 2-10 books per year reader, and now I just finished 14 books in January. I’m so in the weeds now that I made my own super detailed spreadsheet to track my reading stats since Goodreads is hot garbage.

    16. Livid-Statement-3169 on

      You are SO RIGHT!!! That has to be one of the worst books that I have ever read

    17. Lol. This is basically exactly my experience last year with a little life.

      After a reading slump I made a goal and started with a book everyone claims was the best they ever read, so emotional, so beautiful, life changing. I hated it. It was torture porn, 400 pages too long and I side eye people who love it without reservations.

    18. coho books are straight up garbage. dunno why ppl keep hyping her up esp iewu. i’m convinced anyone who liked iewu has seriously questionable taste in books. 😭

    19. Never heard about this Coleen Whatoover but she really seems an awful writer from what i’ve seen online and in this sub.
      This said don’t be too harsh on your friend, literary taste is mostly an aquired one and personally i see Harry Potter as not much better than this book you had to read, but i always try to be polite when talking about it with potterheads.

    20. Kudos on making it further than I did. I got 100 pages in and realized I hated every single character in the book for being poorly written and annoying, and stopped. I refuse to believe a grown woman wrote it, it was so bad.

    21. themaskedcanuck on

      So from all these comments my take is Colleen Hoover is the modern day V.C. Andrews, would this be right?

    22. I recommend staying away from A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara then. Your description of “it ends with us” is like a mild version of how I feel about that book.

    23. Ew I couldn’t get past the first pages. I’ve read a couple books by this author and I honestly think she doesn’t know how human relationships work

    24. Slightly unrelated, but next year you should try doubling the number of books you read the previous month. So one book in January, two books in February, four in March and so on and so forth 🙂

      >!That’s 4095 books for those playing the home game.!<

    25. Not commenting on the book, as I haven’t read it. But setting yourself the goal to read 78 books this year to get back into reading might backfire. That is a lot of books and quickly turns into a chore. If you’re only starting to get back into it I would try reading one every two weeks (26) or one every week if you’re ambitious (52). Just my two cents

    26. > This must be legitimately the worst book I’ve ever read. I swear, it’s definitely the worst.

      Have you tried Atlas Shrugged?

      Everything I’ve ever heard about Colleen Hoover books makes me glad to stay far away!

    27. Just wait until the movie…! Yay!

      Colleen Hoover writes in a *really* understandable way, and I think that is one of the reasons she is so popular despite the mediocre content. I feel like there are so many times her writing could be GREAT, but then it goes sideways and squashes the potential. I pick up her books when I want to fill my time but I don’t want to think. She’s a huge hit or miss for people.

    28. The names alone! RYLE. ATLAS. LILY FUCKING BLOOM.

      This was my first Colleen Hoover and I was obsessed with how bad it was, like telling everyone I knew obsessed. Honestly, I had a blast hate-reading it and will probably tackle more Colleen Hoover in the future because I just really love bitching about books I hate sometimes.

    29. YouTuber Rachel Oates does a great job critiquing Coleen Hoover’s writing. You might find her videos cathartic.

    30. justdont_screwitup on

      I read it just to see what all the Colleen Hoover hullabaloo was about. The minute I stopped reading it as a love story and realized it was a didactic novel, or, like, a morality play about domestic abuse—this was around the second time what’s his nuts lays his hands on Lily—it became much more tolerable. It’s a little dumb, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, I won’t be picking up the sequel or any other CoHo books, and I understand where the vitriol comes from… but I’ve read worse books.

    31. I’m new to reading. I only just started last year after having a delayed flight and buying some books at the airport. The next flight I ended up having I asked for book recommendations and one of my coworkers strongly recommended Colleen Hoover and suggested I start with either Verity or It Ends With Us. I read Verity and hated it. Then I read It Ends With Us because after reading Verity I thought “this obviously isn’t the author’s typical genre and that can be difficult to do successfully, so I’ll try another one”. Nope. Nope nope. Her books SUCK and I’m harshly judging my coworker for recommending her so highly.

      Also the worst part is during the acknowledgments for that book, Hoover talks about how her own mother was in an abusive relationship and she was essentially writing her mom’s story……………

      Also the whole Ellen Degeneres thing was so weird

    32. New_Discussion_6692 on

      Colleen Hoover is an overrated hack. Verity was **awful** and I’ve never read another book of hers. Half the crap in Verity was for shock value and did nothing to improve the story.

    33. when I read it ends with us I loved it (I was 12 keep in mind) and I always have some sort of respect for it for helping me get into reading as it was one of the first “grown up” books I read which really made me love reading again. I really hated ugly love it was actually so bad I was up until 5am reading it bc if I put it down I wouldn’t have been able to pick it back up, those are the only two colleen hoover books I’ve read and now I’ve got it starts with us sitting on my shelf and I’m deadass so scared to read it bc ik it’s gonna be so bad

    34. Alpaca-hugs on

      I just got done with this book and felt the same way! She’s delusional to not recognize how abusers use kids after divorce/ separation to manipulate and hurt the other person- also hurting the child. I yelled at the book and threw it when I was done!

    35. AfterHalf7522 on

      Maybe read the notes from the author at the end of the book. Then say she doesn’t know anything about the subject.

    36. Mysterious_South_124 on

      I wanted to read this to see what all the hype was about, so I bought it. I have to agree that it is poorly written and did not grab my attention. I attempted to read the book 3 separate times, but I could not get through the first page 🫣 Since the movie began filming I decided to try one more time because I wanted to compare the two, but could only get through the first chapter before puting it down. I expected more since so many people enjoyed it. It’s just not for me.

    37. SpineCrushersPod on

      If you’re interested in a humorous rant about this book, check out our latest episode of Spine Crushers available on Spotify or Apple Podcasts 🙂

    38. Excellent_Banana_234 on

      THANK YOU!!!! I also think this book is horrid, and it’s not even the disrespect to abuse. The main character is an idiot, and her obsession with Ryle makes no sense to me as there is nothing to like about him. lol.

    39. Im here trying to find out what peoples issue with the book is?
      It felt pretty realistic to me. Plenty of women stick around abusive relationships and the way she went back and forth trying to justify it also sounded accurate to what ive heard? Ive seen no where, where the book romanticises the abuse, or actually justifies it or anything. It felt realistic? Can someone help point out the issues?
      Without being dicks and losing their shit?

    40. Opening-Set3153 on

      Ok I am convinced that I am OP with amnesia because this not only is my thoughts exactly, but I also write like this. Ha and also because I also have patients who have gone through this and it looks so different. Signs are way more subtle at first. The Harry Potter analogy is spot on.

      Anyway I literally came to reddit looking for a post along these lines because I felt like I was the only one, but knew I couldn’t be the only one. Thank you. 😂

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