Love And Identity In It Starts With Us By Colleen Hoover

Colleen Hoover’s novel, “It Starts with Us” is about a young woman named Lily who has encountered many abusive relationships. In the first half of this novel, we see Lily deal with issues regarding her identity, along with her love life. After being involved in an abusive relationship herself, Lily decides to end the cycle with her daughter in hope to give her a better life than she had. Throughout the novel we see the author use the theme categories of love and identity to convey her message that, recovery is an important aspect of new beginnings. She emphasizes this message through the use of characterization in the way she depicts Lily.

The beginning of the book describes how Lily is struggling to find herself in all the pain she is dealing

This had a major impact on her because it put her in a dark place, where she created excuses and scenarios in her head of why she should stay with him. It wasn't until she realized that she was in fact “becoming [her] mother,” that she finally understood something she never wanted to, the reason her mother never left her father, love (Hoover 55). Her worst fear was coming true, and that terrified her. After she asks for a divorce her life begins to go up, but then other issues begin to arise. When her childhood love, Atlas reappears in her life all she wants to do is be with him, because “it was always supposed to be him” (Hoover 35). She is hesitant though because she fears that her old husband might rage a fit over her new rediscovered love (Hoover 35). Hoover’s use of characterization throughout the beginning of this novel depicts Lily to be isolated, resistant, timid, and always putting the needs of others before her own. For example, she constantly makes statements similar to, “I don't know why I even said that. I can’t prevent him from bonding with our daughter” (Hoover 20). She says these things to dismiss the reasons why she put up certain boundaries with her ex-husband. For instance, she said that

She begins to become firmer with her statements, not letting others influence her as easily. This shift occurs because she decides to take time for herself to reflect and get everything together before making any more major decisions. Lily now describes herself to be "so far removed from the life [she] lived back then" (Hoover 129). During this time of self-reflection, Lily becomes more confident in herself, as well as her decisions, and decided to try life with Atlas. This was a major step for her and it was a great one as we can tell so far in the book. If it wasn’t for Lily's amazing support system, she may have still been in that dark place or even still with Ryle. It was because of her friends and family that she was able to "stay strong enough every second of the day" and not fall back into temptation (Hoover 112). Recovery and support are critical components in being able to leave difficult situations, and fortunately Lily had all of those things, allowing her to begin her new beginning and life with