Colleen Hoover’s Kirkus-starred novel It Ends With Us starts out as a fairly standard romance novel in which an attractive, quirky florist falls in love with a stunningly handsome neurosurgeon. At about the halfway point, however, it turns out not to be a romance, but a story of domestic abuse. That combination of elements struck a chord with readers; the book has sold more than a million copies since it was published in 2016. A new film adaptation, starring Blake Lively, premieres in theaters on Aug. 9.

The novel opens with hints of darkness: The 23-year-old narrator sits on the rooftop ledge of a Boston apartment building contemplating what drives people to suicide and reflecting on the recent funeral of her father. Then a striking, muscular gentleman comes up to the roof; he “appears to be on the verge of a breakdown” and takes out his frustrations on a chair, kicking it violently and repeatedly before calming down and noticing the narrator’s presence.

Within moments, the pair embark on an improbably revealing conversation full of “naked truths.” She reveals, among other things, that her father used to sometimes hit her mother, and he confesses that he, a surgeon, just lost a young patient on the operating table. However, things lighten up considerably as their mutual attraction grows. Her name, it turns out, is Lily Blossom Bloom, and she’s about to open a flower shop; Hoover takes great pains to have Lily point out the silliness of this, but it’s distracting. The surgeon’s name is Ryle Kincaid, which Lily (and, presumably, Hoover) thinks is “a really great name”—but is it, though? During the pair’s conversation, Lily also mentions having lost her virginity to an unhoused teenager when she was in high school; that boy’s name was Atlas Corrigan, of all things.

In the next several chapters, Ryle doggedly pursues Lily in a manner that comes very close to stalking and says things like “No one in the history of my life has ever crawled under my skin and refused to leave like you did.” She finds all this romantic and charming; she also really enjoys when he wears his scrubs home after a long shift—which, frankly, seems unsanitary.

Their relationship gets serious quickly, but then something unexpected happens: Ryle burns his hand on a casserole dish, and when he drops it, she involuntarily laughs. In response, he shoves her roughly into a cabinet. She’s injured and frightened, but when he apologizes, she tentatively forgives him. It’s the first sign that Ryle may not be the man she thought he was.

Along the way, Lily happens to run into her old flame, Atlas, who now owns an up-and-coming Boston restaurant. He quickly realizes that she’s in a dangerous situation, but she’s unwilling to acknowledge it—until things escalate to a point that she knows she has to make a life-changing decision.

Domestic abuse is a complex and difficult topic, and Hoover brings impressive nuance to her treatment within a romance framework. (The book was inspired by her parents’ relationship.) Lily’s narration expresses the turmoil and confusion of spouses at risk: “Part of me wants to scream at him and call the police….Part of me wishes I could forgive him.” The problem with It Ends With Us is that Hoover makes it improbably easy for Lily to escape her abusive situation. Almost immediately after Ryle commits a horrific act of violence, he conveniently leaves for England for three months, which allows Lily the time and space to form a plan. Atlas, meanwhile, is right there to support her. Also, Lily and her friends have plenty of money to throw around—not the case in many real-life situations.

In an author’s note, Hoover writes that she didn’t “intend for Ryle’s character to define the characteristics of most abusers”—but the fact is that he’s far less of a threat than many real-life abusers are. When he reappears in Lily’s life later on, she angrily tells him off, but he reacts surprisingly calmly, displaying a sense of quiet shame; his brutality, his stalking tendencies, his jealousy, his uncontrolled rage issues—all conveniently disappear, so that the protagonist can move on to a safe new life. For many endangered spouses, it’s just not that simple.

The film adaptation is mostly faithful to the novel, but it loses something in this translation to the screen—specifically, Lily’s nonstop narration, which is full of asides and occasional insights. Lively is a charming actor, and she successfully gets across her character’s chatty and thoughtful manner. However, Lily’s ruminations on cycles of abuse—which are some of the novel’s most compelling passages—are almost entirely absent from the film. Still, Brandon Sklenar (of the Paramount+ show 1923) brings a likable sensitivity to Atlas, as does Alex Neustaedter as the younger version of the same character; he appears in lengthy flashbacks, along with the appealing Isabela Ferrer as the young Lily.

Jane the Virgin’s Justin Baldoni, who plays Ryle, also directed the movie; at times, he seems to foreground Ryle’s anguish, which feels like a misguided bid to make a monster more sympathetic. The film even deletes a few of Ryle’s later scenes in the book; he’s largely absent for most of the movie’s final act, which makes it even easier for Lily to pursue a happy ending. One only wishes that the film acknowledged that, for many victims of abuse, such an ending isn’t always so easy.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.