Iowa Hawk Shop Replaces Every Textbook With “It Ends With Us”

The University of Iowa Hawk Shop, the official bookstore for students to find their textbooks at their most inflated prices, made a shocking overnight switch last night. This morning, students attempting to finally give in and pay the full price for that textbook they have been putting off purchasing since the start of the semester were surprised to find that every book in the Hawk Shop’s stock had been replaced with a copy of “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover.

The controversial romance novel stars a protagonist named Lily Blossom Bloom who owns a flower shop, and at least has the common decency to be embarrassed about that. She falls in love with a man named Ryle Kincaid, a walking red flag who fulfills all his red flags by becoming abusive towards Lily. She manages to escape the relationship through her weird obsession with Ellen Degeneres, who is frankly only a few moral steps higher than Ryle, but glad she’s happy I guess.

The book was originally published in 2016, but didn’t gain popularity until 2021, after everyone had already read all the good books out there during the pandemic and had to start scraping the bottom of the barrel. Now, it is more prevalent than ever, as a film adaptation starring Blake Lively was released in July that single-handedly bombed her and her husband Ryan Reynolds’s public perception and got them both #cancelled.

But Iowa loves nothing more than to insert themselves into problematic situations, so they were more than happy to order hundreds of copies of the book and move them into the Hawk Shop as fast as possible. 

One spokesperson for the Hawk Shop told Iowa, “Once I read the book, I knew it was the only learning material our students really needed. After all, what can a biology textbook teach that Lily’s flower shop can’t? Or what else can a chemist need to know beyond the chemistry that Lily and Ryle have in the beginning?” And for the art majors, don’t you worry: the Hawk Shop has also stocked several copies of the “It Ends With Us” coloring book.

It is unclear whether the Hawk Shop acted independently on this choice or if this was approved by higher-ups at the University. Barb Wilson has yet to comment, although paparazzi recently photographed her leaving her mansion with a copy of the book sticking out of her purse.

In unrelated news, the University of Iowa recently received a generous donation from Colleen Hoover to expand their famous Creative Writing program.