Credit: Melina Barris

Join WSPN reporter Natalie Greenaway as she compares and contrasts the It Ends With Us book and movie.

Released in 2016, It Ends With Us is a book written by Colleen Hoover. This summer, a movie adaptation of the book came out.

The story follows a 23- year- old college graduate named Lily Bloom. Lily is a vibrant character who has big plans for her life. After her father passes away in the beginning of the book, she moves to Boston in hopes of opening her own flower shop. The first night she is in the city, she meets a 30- year- old neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid. They talk, and after immediate attraction, Lily decides to go home and leave it at that. Through connections, they meet again and begin dating and rush to a quick elopement. Throughout their relationship, Ryle has abusive episodes, which includes hitting, pushing and sexual abuse. Most of these episodes are triggered by Atlas, man from Lily’s childhood she was once in a relationship with. Atlas was a runaway boy in Lily’s town, and she helped him by giving him food and clothes and providing him with the love and support he never had. Ryle’s abuse gets to a point where Lily knows she has to leave Ryle and decides to do so after the birth of their child. Ultimately, Lily ends up with Atlas, and their storyline continues in Hoover’s sequel, It Starts With Us.

Character: Lily
Book
In the book, Lily is portrayed as a young, free-spirited and freshly graduated 23-year-old young woman. Lily is a natural redhead in the book as well. You can imagine her hair as auburn, silky and smooth. She is described as to wearing dresses and florals with a whimsical element. This portrays Lily as young and naive to readers.

Movie:
In the movie, Lily is played by Blake Lively, who is 37 years old with blonde hair. Although they tried to make Lively appear younger, she did not look 23. For the movie, her hair was dyed an ashy orange color and teased out to be frizzy and wild. This shocked viewers because it was not what they had imagined in the book. Along with the hair, Lily’s style was quite different from the book. Lively appeared on screen with lots of layered clothes that did not match. Her outfits were seen as messy and not styled for some viewers.

Dory storyline:
Book
Ellen Degeneres was a role model for Lily in the book when she was growing up. Sometimes Lily saw her as a parent figure. Because Lily came from an abusive household, her parents were not always the people she looked up to. She would continuously write journal entries addressed to Ellen about her everyday life, struggles with her family and the time she spent with Atlas. Lily shared this information with Atlas early in their relationship, and that led to Lily’s nickname, Dory, the fish that Degeneres voices in the movie “Finding Nemo.” Atlas and Lily coin the saying “just keep swimming” as motivation to keep on going even when life gets hard. Furthermore, they start to refer to Lily as Dory. This carries through the book to the end when Lily decides to give her daughter the middle name of Dory. This action displays the importance of Ellen in Lily’s life.

Movie
Although this was such a highlighted piece in the book, the movie failed to show the importance of it. There was no mention of Dory or “just keep swimming” in the film at all. The journal entries were addressed to Ellen in the book, but for viewers that had not read the book, this part of the story may have been confusing.

Recovery at Atlas’s house
Book:
In the book, after Lily is sexually assaulted by Ryle, she goes to Atlas’s house for help. It is said that she spent several days there recovering from the trauma. Atlas comforts and takes care of her. This time is healing to readers after the whiplash of being in love with Ryle to feeling betrayed by him.

Movie:
Unlike the book, it is understood that Lily spends a very short amount of time at Atlas’s house before leaving to go back home. All the scene shows is Atlas bringing her dinner and her taking a shower and then going to sleep. This is not the same experience as written about in the book, and this whole portion of the movie felt rushed when it really should have been delicately filmed and edited because of how heavy the situation was.

In all, the movie felt very different from the book because of how much was left out. It seems like the production missed the mark with some of the plot points. It was a bit upsetting because of what could have been done with this storyline, and what they failed to show.