In the news for her cameo appearance as Lady Deadpool in Deadpool & Wolverine, Blake Lively is back on the big screen with a lead role in the romantic drama It Ends With Us.

An adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel and directed by Justin Baldoni, who also plays the man whom Lively’s character falls in love with, It Ends With Us punches you in the gut before wrapping you in an embrace.

At the centre of the drama is Blake Lively as Lily Blossom Bloom, an aspiring florist who is also looking for love. Lily moved to Boston from Maine to avoid her father who she had grown up watching physically abuse her mother (played by Amy Morton). Determined to not fall into the trap her mother did, Lily wants a relationship built on mutual love and respect.

In Boston, Lily sets up her long-planned flower shop where one day dishy neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (played by Justin Baldoni) drops by. The sparks fly between Lily and Ryle, which soon grows into a passionate romance, but it isn’t long before the shadow of her first love begins to loom over the relationship. As Lily begins to see troubling similarities between Ryle and her father, she unintentionally reconnects with her first love, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), which complicates things between her and Ryle.

From the first time they meet, it's clear that Lily’s idea of an idyllic romance with Ryle is actually a ticking time bomb. The scenes of their tumultuous relationship are intertwined with flashbacks of a younger Lily (Isabela Ferrer) striking up a friendship with a younger Atlas (Alex Neustaedter), who has moved into an abandoned house across the street to escape his mother’s abusive boyfriend. They lend each other a shoulder, with Atlas providing Lily the space to express her fears while witnessing her mother being beaten up by her father. The young actors bring in a sense of weariness while retaining the hope of better days.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s chemistry is electric, making their initial romance both captivating and heartbreaking when it finally unravels. Lively delivers as a vulnerable but resilient woman struggling to break away from a toxic relationship. Sklenar, despite his limited screen time, has a magnetic presence as Atlas.

Director Baldoni makes a sincere attempt at portraying the insidious ways in which domestic violence and emotional abuse breaks a person. It Ends With Us becomes a film that lingers, keeping the conversation alive about what cannot be passed as love and what it takes to shake off the grip of an abuser.