My honest opinions on the Colleen Hoover moment
TW: sexual and physical violence
Colleen Hoover’s “romance” novels have been trending on BookTok for a while now, and her hit novel It Ends with Us is actually what got me back into reading several years back. I understood the hype briefly because the issues she covers are so captivating. After reading a few more of her novels over the years, though, I’ve started to realize that her books are quite problematic.
This past summer, though, I was in a bit of a reading slump with so much going on, and I needed an easy read with at least 4 stars on Goodreads to ease myself back into the hobby that I love. I settled on a CoHo read because It Ends With Us was what got me reading again in the first place, plus, I thought that maybe I should give her another chance.
She has so many fans, so I thought I had just read the few books that didn’t do well. I did some research and saw that Too Late had pretty positive reviews and also took a different approach from her classic romantic spin. It was darker and more mysterious, marketed as a psychological thriller.
Colleen Hover and The Controversy Surrounding Her Novels
To summarize, the main character, Sloan, is stuck in an unhealthy relationship living with her drug dealer boyfriend, Asa. She relies on him financially to pay for her brother’s care in a facility for those with disabilities, but her dependence on Asa leads him to become more manipulative and obsessive.
Undercover agent Carter learns that there’s a big drug trafficker (Asa) in the area, and he’s on a mission to turn him in. Carter puts on an act and becomes good friends with Asa, but Sloan and Carter start to develop feelings for each other. He protects Sloan from the abuse, and Sloan eventually discovers Carter’s true identity.
However, Asa, with his abusive and possessive nature, will kill anyone who interferes with what is his, so Sloan and Carter continue to fall in love while creating an escape from her trauma bond with Asa.
In my opinion, it was very disappointing from the start. Sloan literally gets SA by Asa on the second page of the book. One reason I was weary of picking up another CoHo book was because the universal experience of all her main characters seemed to be that they’re victims of some sort of interpersonal violence (rape in Hopeless, domestic violence in It Ends With Us, severe childhood trauma in Heart Bones, etc.).
Not only is this triggering, but it starts to get redundant if that’s the whole premise of every main character’s personality. It also reflects poorly on how Hoover views young women, as if abuse is just an ordinary part of womanhood.
The Fall of Colleen Hoover and Blake Lively
I also find it disturbing that Hoover markets all of her books as romance novels, even though they are more about traumatized women than actually finding a partner and experiencing love. This is upsetting because the implication is that all women must experience some form of extreme abuse (by a man) in order to fall in love, when this is simply not the case.
Related to this, throughout the novel, there were some very graphic scenes of Asa’s abuse towards Sloan in ways of sexual and physical violence. An author who (for some reason) uses abuse as such a common theme in her books should know by now that trigger warnings are expected.
Something else I found upsetting about this particular Colleen Hoover book was the portrayal of mental illness. At one point in the book, Asa becomes so toxic that he pretends to be a schizophrenic by outwardly faking his symptoms, like sitting in the shower with his clothes on for hours at a time just counting numbers.
It’s clear that Hoover is attempting to present him as someone who has such a severe paranoid personality disorder that he fakes schizophrenia, but it felt like there was little research done on these conditions.
This is probably just my inner psych major nerding out, but the symptoms Hoover attributed to Asa didn’t align correctly with the DSM-V. It’s more than just experiencing hallucinations and stalking your romantic partner’s location, and this felt belittling to both people who actually do struggle with these illnesses and their close ones.
On the one hand, I appreciate Hoover attempting to speak out about women in toxic interpersonal relationships. It’s important to educate young adults on these issues through popular literature because once upon a time, women were silenced when they tried to come forward. However, the whole book is spent on Sloan’s situation of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse (in painful detail) rather than raising awareness.
There’s hardly any focus on the prevalence of interpersonal violence and encouraging vulnerable women in Sloan’s position to reach out to channels for help, so they can safely leave their abusers. Instead, the book mostly just harps on the actual abuse itself because it’s essentially a stepping stone to Sloan falling in love with Carter.
These were a few things that stuck out to me as problematic in Too Late and that I’ve noticed as a recurring pattern throughout her other books as well. I feel like I’ve given Hoover many chances, but I find her books monotonous and triggering, full of sensitive topics.
I also don’t find her writing very challenging or mentally stimulating. Sentence structure is bland, not a lot of showing and mostly telling. However, this can be helpful for a reading slump.
This is probably a controversial take because I know many people love her work. She has a whole community on BookTok. But we all know, the best part about reading is finally finishing a book, entering your rating on Goodreads, and reviewing other people’s honest opinions!