November 9
A few open-door scenes, described but not lingered on.
Direct. Plain anatomical words, moderately crude dialogue.
Estimated from the blurb · 0 reader votes · Ending HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Blurb
In this “brave and heartbreaking novel that digs its claws into you and doesn’t let go, long after you’ve finished it” (Anna Todd, New York Times bestselling author) from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of All Your Perfects, a workaholic with a too-good-to-be-true romance can’t stop thinking about her first love. Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. And when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life seems too good to be true. Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place. As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan—her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened. An honest, evocative, and tender novel, It Ends with Us is “a glorious and touching read, a forever keeper. The kind of book that gets handed down” (USA TODAY).
Read it? Rate it
It Ends With Us
Same author and same heroine's story, with the abuse storyline front and center rather than background""and a harder, darker emotional gut-punch.
Reminders of Him
Another CoHo small-town second chance built on guilt and grief, less love triangle, more redemption and a firmer happy ending.
Beach Read
Two writers circling each other, emotional baggage and slow burn, but lighter and funnier than the seed's brutal subject matter.
Cruel Winter with You
Also first-love-comes-back with slow-burn tension, but short, cozy and snowbound with none of the heavy trauma.
The Last Letter
Letters, small town, and gut-punch emotional devastation like the seed, though the pain here is grief rather than abuse.
Summer Girl
Keeps the small-town summer setting and slow burn between two people with history, but lighter in tone and spicier on the page.