It Starts With Colleen Hoover
You don’t even need TikTok to know the name Colleen Hoover. We’re sure you have seen her novels in the hands of girls at school, on the bus, or by the pool. This begs the question, who is Colleen Hoover and how did her romance novels become so popular?
In 2012, she self-published her first novel, Slammed, while she was living in a trailer with her husband and two sons. At the time, she was working as a social worker, and could barely make ends meet financially. Seven months later, Slammed hit the New York Times best- seller list, and she quit her job to write full time.
According to NPD BookScan, six of the top 10 best-selling books of 2022 of any genre are Hoover’s. Many of her current best-selling books came out years ago, like Ugly Love which was released in 2014. This kind of popularity is extremely rare in the publishing world. Her top selling book is It Ends With Us, which came out in 2016, but became hugely popular years later in 2021. After fans begged for a sequel, Hoover released It Starts With Us roughly a month ago.
“We were like, ‘Where is this coming from?’” said Melanie Iglesias Pérez, Hoover’s editor at Atria. “That’s when we started to see the TikTok videos. It was better publicity than anyone in sales or marketing could have engineered.” Hoover said she’s tired of seeing herself on TikTok too. “My feed became all Colleen Hoover stuff,” she said. “I just wanted to see cat videos, you know?”
In spite of Colleen Hoover having a huge fan base, there are criticisms circulating around this author’s beloved characters and stories. A pervasive criticism of her work, especially in It Ends With Us, is that she romanticizes abusive behavior. Softening abuse in literature turns situations like this into something positive that draws readers to it. These books create intense and dramatic stories filled with abuse that somehow leave the reader wanting more.
It Ends With Us is a story of abuse showcased in a Hallmark-loving tone. What makes this duology offensive is not that it tries to tackle the idea of domestic abuse with depth. But, that is mostly offset by the strangely rom-com tone these two books decide to take, making the books sound fun loving and lighthearted in a way that domestic abuse is not.
Another example is seen in the novel November 9, in which the reader is meant to root for the main couple of interest, Ben and Fallon. It is not a book that centers around abuse as it does in It Ends With Us, but Ben displays signs of controlling and manipulating behavior while lying to her throughout the novel. Multiple times during the novel, Fallon tells Ben, “I need to leave” and he either grabs her, stands in front of the door, or otherwise blocks her exit. However, we as readers are somehow supposed to love and support these characters together.
The effects of this “trend”, especially on adolescent girls, is profound. The toxic love found in fictional stories that attracts Generation Z has become a normalized standard of relationships. Colleen Hoover is not the only one to blame for this; abusive behavior has high entertainment value that is seen almost everywhere in our media today. Hopefully, we can appreciate the talent of this author without idolizing and romanticizing toxic behaviors of her fictional characters.
Written by Mckenna Madis, Photography: Anna Burson, Social Media: Karla Trevino