'It Ends with Us' review: Colleen Hoover's bestselling novel becomes middling Hollywood romance

In "It Ends with Us," the ugliness of domestic violence mingles with the aspirational glitz of a Hollywood romance. It’s an uneven mix, but possibly a successful one: This is the first film adaptation of a novel by Colleen Hoover, the self-made publishing phenom who seems to dash off bestsellers the way you or I might scribble a grocery list. For Hoover’s fan base — known as the CoHort — "It Ends with Us" might be the perfect blend of fantasy and reality.

Blake Lively plays Lily Bloom, who despite her name is no wallflower. After fleeing her abusive home, Lily has grown into a confident, well-dressed Bostonian who runs — what else? — a flower shop. It’s such an adorable Art Nouveau boutique that the jaunty fashionista Allysa (Jenny Slate) simply must work there even though she’s married to a tech kajillionaire (Hasan Minhaj). So far, so fabulous.

There’s more: On the roof deck of a high-rise one night, Lily meets Ryle, a gym-toned neurosurgeon played by the film’s director, Justin Baldoni. They can’t help but boggle at their own absurdity: Lily bursts out laughing when she learns of Ryle’s high-status profession, while he marvels at her impossibly symbolic name. Having acknowledged that they are writerly fictions, they get down to canoodling. Did I mention it’s his roof deck, above his penthouse? (The screenplay is by Christy Hall.)

Reality intrudes when we begin to suspect — well before Lily does — that Ryle is not just assertive but abusive, the result of a murky childhood trauma. Baldoni handles this slow dawning rather cleverly, staging events first from Lily’s self-blinded perspective and only later revealing the truth. As Lily explains away her wounds and covers up her shiners, she refuses to see that she’s becoming her own mother (Amy Morton).

There’s some depth to this material. Hoover herself grew up in an abusive home, and Baldoni (who directed 2019’s effective teen weeper "Five Feet Apart") treats the topic with care. But "It Ends with Us" is not what you'd call social realism. Lily’s high school flame, a homeless kid named Atlas, suddenly reappears as the scruffy-sexy owner of a hugely successful restaurant. (He’s played by an appealing Brandon Sklenar, of TV’s "1923.”) Now our hero is torn between two lovers — one bad boy, one good guy, both dreamboats — much like a certain vampire-infatuated teen and bondage-curious virgin before her.

Despite her fragile beauty, Lively (a co-producer) empowers Lily with a spine, a voice and two feet to stand on. But what about that white knight in the expensive suede jacket? Faced with a choice between real life and gauzy fantasy, this movie invariably prefers the latter.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman