Review: It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover
Colleen Hoover it seems, is the master of writing her own fan fiction. Years after It Ends With Us was published, and a good two years after the book had a surprising resurgence on TikTok and went straight back on the bestseller lists, a sequel to the book the author always said was a stand alone is here. And it feels completely unnecessary. Told from the duel perspectives of Lily and Atlas, it tells the story of what happened to the pair after Lily left her abusive husband Ryle. The book also delves into the past of Atlas. Their lives are, unsurprisingly, melodramatic, full of heavily emotional situations, surprise twists, one dimensional characters and the occasional moment of hot and steamy sex. We learn of Atlas' past, growing up with a distant mother who occasionally became abusive and who chose her abusive husband over her son. What the reader never learns is the reason WHY Sutton behaves the way she does, which seems slightly ridiculous considering that breaking the cycle of...