It Starts With Us

 

 

When I had read It Ends With Us I had never thought I would see Lily move on from all that trauma or that I would see her happy with Atlas. But the epilogue and ending of the book had given me hopes for that to happen. I had initially thought the book will not have a sequel, but then when I heard about this book, I was already expecting it to be the therapy that I had required after reading It Ends With Us. What I hadn't expected though was that this book would completely heal me from inside out and also through my standards so high up I'll never be able to bring them back down. 

The book really brings the reader to the realization of how pure love is, and how it feels when the other person loves you from their soul. The love all romance readers look for in all those books they read, the love all romance readers desperately want to feel in their real life, the love which all of us romance readers think of before falling asleep every night. Colleen DID NOT fail at portraying that perfect love, she gave all of her readers exactly the beautiful man they wanted, in the form of Atlas Corrigan. 

While It Ends With Us covered the whole storyline only from Lily's point of view, It Starts With Us also covered Atlas's point of view, letting the readers completely fall in love with both Lily's and Atlas's characters simultaneously. We also see little beams which make the reader love Eleanor just as much as the others. 

After the previous book, where we had learnt mostly about Lily, in this sequel a reader discovers all that Atlas had to go through and how much he had struggled, all the while having barely any comfort, one learns about all the unpleasant experiences that led Atlas to be the fine man he is as in the book.

It Starts with Us covers the story of Lily finally moving on from Ryle and giving herself a second chance at love with Atlas. Though she has divorced Ryle, Lily still feels that her relation with Atlas may be a threat to her child as Eleanor would still get weekend visits with Ryle.

But Atlas helps Lily through her situation, he agrees with her to take their relationship slow, so she can get enough time to process everything and easily navigate her life as a single mother as well. 

After some time, when Lily finally decides to give a chance to dating Atlas again, she is encountered with Ryle's jealousy and is ready to back off thinking of how violent Ryle could get. But Atlas, who finally found his love after going through so much, is not ready to let her go so easily. Atlas assures Lily that she can date him, and he will ensure Ryle never harms her. 

"Don't think about where we used to be, just think about where we are"

As Lily finally gets into a rhythm with her life handling her business, being a single mother and dating Atlas all together, we see Atlas warming up to Eleanor as well. And being a mother, Lily is delighted to find out that Atlas gets along well with her daughter and cares so much for her despite the fact that he isn't her biological father.

Atlas finally gets to read all the letters to Ellen young Lily had written all about her life back when she had met Atlas. The diaries written by Lily tell Atlas all about how deeply Lily had fallen in love with him. But another aspect that the diaries had covered which hurt Atlas to read contained Lily's words about the incidents of abuse she had observed between her father and her mother. The ending of the diaries as well, consisting of her entries from when Atlas had moved to Boston, had hurt Atlas to read. 

Through Atlas's point of view, the author has intricately written in detail about the past of Atlas. Some chapters into the story, Atlas has to face his past again, and this time with the new challenge that his mother had brought to him - his younger brother, of whose existence Atlas never knew. He only learns about the young lad when his brother causes destruction at his restaurants and his mother approaches him for help in finding the child, who ran away from home unnoticed, at the age of 12 only. 

Atlas's letters to Lily give the reader that feeling of pure, unconditional love which we all romance readers seek in our books. The pure-hearted, selfless love Atlas had shown in the previous book too, supporting Lily with her new partner despite how much he loved her himself, has not once failed to touch the readers and make them feel those forbidden butterflies over a fictional man. 

Atlas's revelation about his family and his past, and why he left Lily had hurt every reader equally and there's no denying that we all felt equally bad on learning how much he suffered. A reader deeply sympathizes with Atlas on the multiple revelations about his past, from his mother, his stepfather, on to how he had to live on the streets in Maine and how he came to Boston to create a better life for himself so he could finally face Lily confidently.

"There's this toxic belief that family should stick together. But the best thing I ever did for myself was walk away from them"

 

Lily and Atlas finally get a move together and move ahead of their story, their tragic pasts and all that they had to go through in order to finally be together. The book ends with Atlas rewriting his marriage vows with a quirky and sarcastic line passed on by Theo, Atlas's younger brother. Throughout the book, the reader can observe many instances of Theo advising Atlas on multiple "Finding Nemo" references after learning that Atlas asked Lily out using one.

Lovies, 
Rashima ♡

Extract from the end of "It Starts with Us"