Have you read any of Colleen Hoover’s books? I was big into Colleen Hoover several years ago, first mentioned her on this site in 2015. At the time I’d read her novels Maybe Someday and Ugly Love and I stopped at Confess.
Back then I was heavy into new adult fiction and while I haven’t exactly dropped out of reading new adult (horny books will always be my thing), I haven’t really been keeping up with Colleen’s work…but I do know about the popularity of It Ends With Us, which was released in 2016 but exploded during the pandemic, is still on the NYT bestseller list, along with several of her other titles, largely because of BookTok, which is the book community on TikTok, now known to be a major driver of book sales, maybe even more influential than Instagram for the industry. And BookTok is crazy about Colleen Hoover, aka CoHo: Per Laura Miller, writing at Slate last year:
“CoHo fans on TikTok record themselves sobbing, screaming, gasping in astonishment, and pressing her books to their hearts in winsome displays of adoration. Often, actual words are superfluous to communicating the reader’s response—in fact, they may be more of a hindrance than a help. Above all, BookTok conveys that Hoover’s fiction delivers power jolts of unadulterated feels.”
So about those feels… Colleen Hoover’s writing has been described as “trauma fiction”- there’s romance and sex, obviously, but a lot of sad sh-t happens to her characters, so the reader is taken through a wild range of emotions, from lust to longing to heartbreak and devastation. You can appreciate then why her books became such a thing in the early to mid-part of the pandemic.
It Ends With Us is now getting a film adaptation. Like I said, I didn’t read it, and my reason is kind of embarrassing: the names, I could not get down with the insane names of the characters which are Lily, Ryle, and Atlas. (There is a lot of name f-ckery in new adult fiction.) But also, like I said, I’m aware of the intense fandom, so when Blake Lively was cast as Lily in the movie, I thought…this is going to be huge for her, this is a really smart choice. Here she is, with Justin Baldoni, who is starring and directing, on set in New York.
But some people on BookTok aren’t quite so sure. There are a lot of CoHo fans who aren’t happy with what they’re seeing:
@ameliaslibrary_ the more i look at the outfits, the more i dislike it. they made blake look so much more older for the role. i guess we have to just trust the process 🥺 #itendswithus #itendswithusmovie #colleenhoover #lilybloom #blakelively
♬ original sound - tatamsounds
@talkingtotequila It end with us keeps looking more and more disappointing. #greenscreen #itendswithus #itendswithusmovie #itendswithuscast #blakelively #lilybloom #blakelively #colleenhoover #booktok #itendswithusbook #colleenhooverbooks #itendswithuscolleenhoover
♬ Storytelling - Adriel
@talkingtotequila It end with us keeps looking more and more disappointing. #greenscreen #itendswithus #itendswithusmovie #itendswithuscast #blakelively #lilybloom #blakelively #colleenhoover #booktok #itendswithusbook #colleenhooverbooks #itendswithuscolleenhoover
♬ Storytelling - Adriel
BookTok made It Ends With Us. Will BookTok unmake the movie? I have a hard time believing that. Because BookTok is still talking about it. BookTok is still driving conversation about the book and the story. It’s free publicity for a project that’s still in production. And the marketing team can easily pivot the conversation when there’s a trailer or a teaser ready to share. Between this and The Idea of You, which is another book by Robinne Lee that popped off during the pandemic, starring Anne Hathaway, we’ll soon get a sense of whether or not pandemic book fever can carry over to the screen.
