IEWU follows Lily, a girl in her early twenties, who has never had it easy. Though coming from a family that was better off she has always had to work for the things she's wanted. After graduating college she gets up and moves to Boston and hopes to start her own business. While there she meets and falls for Ryle, a thriving neurosurgeon who is determined to be the best in his field. The two hit it off hard, and things seem almost too good to be true. Ryle is everything that Lily is not. He is forward, assertive, and stubborn. He is also a lot of thing Lily is; he is strong, passionate, and motivated. Though the two have an immediate connections and sparks fly, the two decided to take their time getting to know one another. Lily is such a beautifully written leading lady. I loved getting to grow with her and be apart of her journey. I loved hearing her thoughts and seeing how she processed things. When I was first reading and got to the point where she does her journal entries, but she does them so they are letters to Ellen DeGeneres, I thought I wasn't going to like that aspect of it. The first few had me thinking "this is a little cheesy", but the more I got into it the more I started to enjoy them. They really tied Lily's past and present perfectly together. As Lily's and Ryle's relationship pushes forward she finds herself looking back at those entries and thoughts of her first love Atlas resurface. Atlas was her first everything and was the biggest impact on her life. Atlas was the homeless boy who found his way into the abandoned house next door. Atlas and Lily as teens formed an unlikely friendship. Sharing everything and having a bond that no one around them seemed to understand. Spending every possible moment together and having so many stolen ones the two were kindred spirits. When Atlas reappears in the story it truly threatens everything Lily and Ryle have. (not a spoiler it's given he eventually will). Both Ryle and Atlas bring such important and different aspects to this story. I think CoHo manages to make them both such polar opposites, but at the same time manages to make them mesh so well.The characters in the book, main or side, all feel so realistic and authentic.
When it comes to the plot there is almost nothing I can say about it. I hope everyone will do the same to keep things from getting spoiled. The story is an emotional roller coaster from start to finish. It's one of those books that you will have a thousand theories about and all of them will be wrong. I kept trying to guess what I thought might happen next and in classic Hoover style she managed to surprise me. This book was solid from page one and was steady throughout, but around the 80% mark is where things really took a turn (in the best way possible). IEWU hit me on such a personal level. I didn't expect this book to impact me so hard. It had everything I wanted from a New Adult read. It's very classic CoHo, but it also branches out somewhere she's never been before, but she does it with such ease. She manages to weave these heavy moments with ones that will make you swoon, laugh, and then cry. My favorite part of this book though, was the author's note. Usually author's notes are at the beginning of the story, however it is so important that this one was left for the end. It took a book that was good and made it exceptional! God, this note effected me like so few books have. It made me cry fifty times harder than the entire book or anything Colleen's ever written.
Finding out how important this book was for her to write will hit you hard, but I hope she also knows how important it is as a reader to read. Knowing where an author gets their ideas from can change your whole outlook on a book, and this one... this one broke me.
Thank you Colleen Hoover for continuing to gift the reading community with your words.
10/10 Stars
-Angela
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