Colleen Hoover’s rise to success has been specked with an equally chaotic cultural wave through the book-reading universe.
Colleen Hoover, an American author who primarily writes YA romance, quite recently saw a rapid rise to fame with her bestseller It Ends With Us.
An immediate favourite among romantic fiction enthusiasts, the book instantly trended on various social media platforms and communities, specifically the “BookTok” and “Bookstagram” communities.
Hoover was applauded for bringing the fragile yet rarely discussed subject of domestic violence into mainstream media and starting a conversation about it.
It Ends With Us got a lot of accolades and became the #1 New York Times bestseller of 2016. As a result, Hoover’s fame grew inevitably, attracting millions of readers worldwide. Moreover, she achieved even greater success with her other books, Verity and Ugly Love, which were published in the following years.
It Ends With Us is a compelling tale that deals with the intricacies of domestic violence as a social issue. The vivid depiction of the protagonist’s experiences with an otherwise taboo term caused a ripple effect, not just within the book-reading community but with the general audience as well. While the book was critically acclaimed and Hoover got her well-deserved fame for it, the initial momentum got somewhat lost amidst a lot of problematic issues that rose around her.
Colleen’s books, just like many other works of the romance genre, deal with several mature PG-13 themes. However, recently, her books have come under criticism for obscenity, which includes sexualizing minors. Hoover has since come under public scrutiny numerous times, for all the wrong reasons.
While dealing with mature themes such as abuse and domestic violence, which were frequently associated with the male leads, Hoover’s books tended to glorify such negative traits. Ryle Kincaid, one of the main characters of It Ends With Us, was portrayed as an anti-hero due to his aggressive and abusive traits. Even as a villain, however, there were certain points in the storyline where the protagonist let go of or ignored such traits of his, just because of the heroic light his character was painted in.
Like Ryle Kincaid, several other villains have not been distinguished as villains too, and Hoover’s writing often finds a way to dismiss their controlling or toxic behaviours as simply “human” or the consequence of a traumatic experience. This generalisation has potentially been harm-causing, especially because a large part of Hoover’s audience includes teenagers, who are often impressionable and at a phase in their lives where they are trying to distinguish good from bad.
Moreover, a major chunk of Hoover’s fans have also called her out for several scenes that even made adult audiences uncomfortable. The key reason for public discomfort over her books is that they rarely provide any trigger warnings for heavy themes, while also dismissing the negative traits of the characters without them having to face any actual repercussions for them.
Most recently, Hoover’s release of It Ends With Us merchandise has been called out, as it not only is ignorant of the serious themes of the book but it also, quite offensively, overlooks the sufferings of several actual survivors of domestic abuse.
The internet debate has since then taken a wild turn, with accusations regarding several issues being targeted at Hoover, especially amidst the possibility of a film adaptation of It Ends With Us currently in the works.
However much the fame of Colleen Hoover has skyrocketed in recent years, the backlash she has received has been equally jarring and head-turning. Hoover’s lack of enthusiasm while addressing these issues has certainly worsened the internet debacle and also divided the book-reading community in the process. While certain speculations are probably hyperbolic, it is nonetheless a development that requires intelligent handling because it has jeopardised the otherwise safe space that the book-reading community provided for people from all spheres of society.