New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover is popular for her romance books.
Hoover’s main audience is primarily teen girls. Several of her book’s dive into complex situations that involve many emotional and dark themes.
Hoover is praised on the internet for her books, recently there has been some controversy.
Hoover’s most known book “It Ends with Us” became a hit after it went trending on TikTok, much of a hit that a movie for the book is being released on Friday June 21.
The “It Ends with Us” controversy surrounds the male lead being the abuser to the female lead in the book. Several readers are upset that the abusive scenes in the book are depicted by Hoover as ‘plot twists.’
All of Hoover’s books center or touch on abuse and toxic relationships. Several of her readers have commented that they are ‘confused’ on why Hoover does not include trigger warnings in her books. Some of the needed warnings include abuse, sexual assault, substance use, graphic sexual scenes, miscarriages and many more. Because the genre of her books is romance, many believe some books are romanticizing abusive relationships.
Critics fear many of these themes may be harmful to the young girls reading Hoovers books.
This has created a backlash that has led to criticism towards Hoover’s writing.
A significant impact that led to Hoover’s initial success was ‘booktok.’ ‘Booktok’ is a community on TikTok that discusses and reviews a variety of books.
Besides the ‘romanticizing’ of abuse, a substantial portion of the attention of her books are the mature scenes, also known as smut.
Hoover has received a lot of hate not just for ‘romanticizing’ real life dilemmas but also the way she engages with fans.
Despite all the hate towards Hoover, she maintains to be a bestselling author.