Are Colleen Hoover Fans Ready to Face the Truth About Her Books?

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Colleen Hoover is everywhere. There’s no denying her impact: Book communities on Instagram (CoHorts, as they call themselves) have gone head-to-head ranking their favorite CoHo books (yep, that’s their name for her), while Barnes & Noble and indie bookstores alike have tables dedicated to her work.

Her name alone garners 4.2 billion views and counting on TikTok. Even if you don’t enjoy her writing, it feels like you can’t escape her.

The New York Times best-selling author enjoys an almost cultlike following (I’m not joking—some people will literally bully you if you admit you don’t like her books). But Hoover, who is in the middle of bringing a live-action adaptation of her most popular book, It Ends With Us, to the screen—production is currently paused due to the writer’s strike—has also found herself at the center of a growing and important debate. And it’s starting to show, with TikTok adding words like “controversy,” “slander,” and “canceled”—in that order—right after her name as suggested searches.

As Hoover continues to reach new heights in her career, whispers (and even screams) of a different kind of conversation about her books are starting to take place: that the romances Hoover writes about are toxic and deeply problematic and, in most cases, glorify abuse.

Hoover burst onto the literary scene with her first book, Slammed, in 2012, and by the end of the decade, her books had taken over bestseller lists and must-read roundups. It Ends With Us, the most popular in her canon, sold upward of 4 million copies. Many of her books, including It Ends With Us, deal with domestic abuse. That isn’t a problem in and of itself, to be clear. In fact, the world could do with more books that dig into this topic in a sensitive, meaningful way. The issue is that Hoover’s work has a tendency to romanticize abuse.

A Hoover-ian plot typically kicks off with a relationship problem that drives the protagonist away (like in Ugly Love). The boyfriend character then uses physical abuse and manipulation to get his partner to stay (see: November 9). The main character very easily forgives her partner for his dangerous transgressions (Without Merit is just one example). And the boyfriend rarely, if ever, apologizes for his harm (like in It Ends With Us).

Now, you could easily argue that these books are fiction and should be treated as such. But Colleen Hoover’s books are extremely popular and leave an impression on young women—Hoover’s primary audience—by casually portraying abuse as “just how a relationship is supposed to work.”

This is the main reason it’s worrying that It Ends With Us is getting a film adaptation. Given the book’s popularity, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Justin Baldoni (Rafael Solano from Jane the Virgin and Blake Lively (no introduction needed) happily joined the project.

It Ends With Us follows the story of Lily Bloom and her doomed relationship with Ryle Kincaid. It traces Lily’s life from her childhood in an abusive home to her adulthood in an abusive relationship and her eventual escape from this tragic cycle. With Blake being the epitome of an It Girl, you know the theaters will be filled with teens.

Hoover’s work describes abusive situations through rose-colored glasses and ultimately doesn’t really define them as abusive—rather, they’re deemed romantic. Of course, there are real-life consequences to masquerading abuse as romance, particularly for young readers, and it’s likely that in our era of streaming, the movie will reach even more people than her books have.

Leaving an abusive relationship is never easy, and there are a multitude of complex reasons someone may decide to stay in one. But normalizing this cycle of abuse can be dangerous.

“I think when I was reading the book, I could differentiate how the relationship was extremely toxic and how it narrated what a lot of women go through trying to get out of a toxic environment,” explains 24-year-old brand coordinator Aayushi Shah, who used to be a Colleen Hoover fan. “The problem is that her audience is super young and may possibly not have the understanding of why this is toxic and not how a relationship should be. The problem with her storylines is that domestic abuse often comes off as a ‘fixable issue’ when it very much is not. I hope they address that in the movie.”

In the book, Ryle is not described as a bad person but as a “person who does bad things.” This is a man who premeditated a violent sexual assault on his wife, physically injured her, and used his trauma to defend his behavior and manipulate her into staying…and he ends the book with a redemption arc.

“I personally was not a fan of It Ends With Us and was sort of irked by the domestic violence representation,” admits 23-year-old employment coordinator Sakshi Ghosh. “I think there was a level of blasé tone in the way domestic violence was shown and written about. I know that it was inspired by her own family; however, I feel like if you are going to publish a book about such a heavy topic, I would be really thorough in seeing if the way I have written about it makes other victims with different storylines uncomfortable.”

Hoover was also slated to release an adult coloring book based on It Ends With Us, but after receiving backlash given the sensitive themes, she pulled the plug on the project.

Readers continue to devour her books, despite the creeping blowback on social media. Journalist Chloe Bishop still enjoys them:

With the film adaptation of It Ends With Us on its way, we can only hope that the cast and crew choose to right some of the book’s wrongs onscreen.

Because at the end of the day, people will do what they want, whether you agree with them or not. Book reviewer Anna Davis remains a Hoover fan, although she understands why people might not want to read her books anymore. She says:

Reading about domestic abuse is hard. Watching it play out onscreen will be even harder. If you want to adapt a book this controversial, you need to make damn sure you’re doing it right. Because try as you might, the primary audience that will go see this movie will be young Colleen Hoover fans who deserve better.

So for now, love for Colleen Hoover is alive and well. But maybe Ryle and Lily’s complicated story won’t go down as easy over a bowl of popcorn.

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