It Ends With Us Books in Order

The It Ends With Us books follow Lily Bloom as she fights to end a cycle of intimate partner violence that has shaped her whole life. Across two novels the series asks what it actually costs to walk away and start again when love, loyalty, and safety pull in different directions.

In It Ends with Us Lily moves to Boston, opens a flower shop, and falls for neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid. At the same time she rereads the teenage journals where she wrote about her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she secretly helped as a teen. The book shifts between those diary entries and the present as small moments of Ryle’s temper escalate, forcing Lily to compare her relationship to the abuse she watched her mother endure.

Hoover has said this was the hardest book she has written, in part because it draws on her parents’ marriage. Rather than framing Lily’s choice as a simple escape, the story sits with financial fear, shared history, and the pressure to make a bad situation look perfect from the outside. Many readers find the ending cathartic, but the path there is emotionally rough and includes detailed scenes of domestic violence.

It Starts with Us picks up right where the first novel leaves off. Told in alternating chapters from Lily and Atlas’s perspectives, it follows them as they try to build a new relationship while Lily co parents with Ryle. The stakes are less about whether they will end up together and more about how they can protect Lily’s young daughter, set boundaries with a volatile ex, and make space for the quiet, steady love that was interrupted years earlier.

Taken together, the duology reads like one long story about breaking generational patterns. The first book focuses on recognizing abuse and choosing to leave; the second spends time on everyday life after that decision, from uncomfortable handoffs at daycare to figuring out what feels safe in a new partnership. Both novels are direct, conversational, and easy to read even when the subject matter is difficult.

If you are brand new to Colleen Hoover and want to try this series, read It Ends with Us before It Starts with Us and be prepared for heavy themes around physical and emotional abuse. The books have also inspired a high profile film adaptation of It Ends with Us, so you can choose to read first, watch first, or use one to deepen your experience of the other.