We all had our teenage vices. I was consuming an unhealthy amount of John Green and basically metamorphosing myself into the manic pixie dream girl trope – the girl who is so quirky, so infinitesimally apart from everyone around her that no one can comprehend her mystery and aura.
It took stepping into adulthood to let go of the idea and realize I was not playing a part in life and was rather my own person with a unique set of complexities, which were not there to aid a partner in their growth or to be romanticized for the plot.
What I have found to be a concerning trend lately is the rise in popularity of abysmally misogynistic pieces in the name of “dark romantic fiction,” so deeply rooted in problematic ideas that they are singlehandedly undoing years of work that activists have done educating young women, both on and offline. One of the flag bearers of this genre is the darling of BookTok, a subgenre of TikTok videos where readers recommend and discuss fiction, and perhaps every critic’s worst nightmare– Colleen Hoover.
The originally self-published author shot to fame through her book being reviewed and raved about on social media, ultimately pushing her into the zeitgeist of the early 2020s. A fan-favorite, which is mortifying, considering the majority of her fanbase is a convoluted mix of young teens, and mostly women, is “It Ends With Us.”
Shoddy writing, blunt, emotionless dialog, and a concerning amount of references to Ellen DeGeneres apart, the book is inherently a bad piece of fiction. It is as if 50 Shades Of Grey and The Fault In Our Stars had a lovechild, which turned out to be an embarrassment and a family failure.
I could ignore the bad writing for long enough to finish the book – a terrible mistake on my part.
The story is marketed as a searing love triangle between the three main characters, and that’s the main reason I decided to pick it up after hearing people talk about it. Imagine my surprise when I find out one of the romantic interests, who Colleen shows to be the perfect man through almost half of the trajectory, is a domestic abuser.
I was concerned that this seemingly “perfect” man coerces his partner into having sex with him, which is portrayed romantically, and displays bouts of anger very often. He is manipulative, lecherous in the way he talks, and basically a red flag I would tell every woman I love to avoid – yet he is depicted as Prince Charming in the trajectory until he ‘suddenly’ switches up.
There are several graphic scenes with marital rape and abuse, and as a firm believer that trigger warnings are not a part of her plan, Hoover basically allows the reader to jump into the story blindly. Not only is this problematic, but so is her claim that “I write for entertainment purposes only. I don’t write to educate, persuade or inform. This book is different.” She markets and writes this book as one for surface-level entertainment and basically romanticizes an abused woman being rescued and falling for her savior.
Hard-hitting proof of this was her decision to come out with a coloring book for “It Ends With Us” which raised enough furor that she decided to pull it back.
This is not the only instance she writes a book that is horrendous for any young woman’s self-worth and idea of romance and love. “I didn’t fall in love with you… I flew,” she writes in another disappointing book titled “Ugly Love.”
Hoover’s writing is like taking a train to Discomfort Central and taking a long, long stop. In this story, her character is dark and brooding, and has a mysterious past that makes it impossible for him to indulge in any romance other than casual flings. Yet, he controls the life of the female lead, grows increasingly angry if he sees her with any other men, and basically humiliates her time and again.
Ah, the way we grant men medals for complexity and depth when they react childishly instead of going to therapy. Imagine a young impressionable girl reading this and thinking the epitome of romance is ‘fixing’ a man who disrespects her time and again.
It is a common denominator in almost all of Hoover’s work – a female lead’s existence is basically bland and meaningless unless it involves a romantic interest that rescues her and turns her life upside down. Oh, and they fall in love in a couple of days, always -- there is no build-up to the relationship or love where they have revelations about each other as people or become friends. Toxicity from the male lead is forgiven because he is sad, and also handsome.
What can women do but forgive sad men who violate their boundaries because they’re charming and handsome? This happens in “November 9”-- Fallon is left with scars due to an arson attempt from Ben, but it’s all OK because he did not mean for her to suffer from third-degree burns. They end up together, by the way.
Add to this hot mess a dash of lack of diversity, formulaic writing and dialogues reminiscent of Tumblr 2014 and you have a New York Times bestseller. November 9 includes a dialog sequence where the male lead Ben laughs off Fallon’s request for sushi as he orders pad thai, saying, “They are basically the same thing.”
It is also worth noting that in the 24 books Hoover has written, there is none of the ethnic diversity you’d expect – there are basically no characters from any ethnic groups or cultures and no discussion about them either, which is awfully weird since most of her storylines are set in some of the most diverse and metropolitan cities in the world. The normative person in Hoover’s literary universe is white.
Hoover has also been under fire for blocking and ignoring a request from a young girl, a minor to be exact, to hold her 21-year-old son accountable for sexual assaulting her. Hoover however, denied blocking the girl or not taking the allegations seriously, but they were very quickly swept under the rug nonetheless.
As a student of literature, it pained me to see her work be compared to Austen, or for her to be termed the modern-day delegate of romantic fiction. We must understand the importance of responsible writing – “it is fiction” is not an excuse to package concerning ideas and market them as surface-level romance, especially when the main consumers of your craft are young women who are yet to fully develop their positions on romance and love. It takes apart the years of effort done by feminist activists to educate young women about the dangers of control, abuse and manipulation veiled as “I am very traumatized and will defy accountability through guilt-tripping you.”
Dark romances might be ‘fiction’ to Hoover, but they are a nightmarish and unfortunate reality for millions of women in this day and age. For this reason alone, Hoover’s work and the recognition it has received is a huge disservice to her readers. All we can hope for is calling out the publishing industry as readers and authors, and addressing these concerns in the hope of better fiction.
It took stepping into adulthood to let go of the idea and realize I was not playing a part in life and was rather my own person with a unique set of complexities, which were not there to aid a partner in their growth or to be romanticized for the plot.
What I have found to be a concerning trend lately is the rise in popularity of abysmally misogynistic pieces in the name of “dark romantic fiction,” so deeply rooted in problematic ideas that they are singlehandedly undoing years of work that activists have done educating young women, both on and offline. One of the flag bearers of this genre is the darling of BookTok, a subgenre of TikTok videos where readers recommend and discuss fiction, and perhaps every critic’s worst nightmare– Colleen Hoover.
The originally self-published author shot to fame through her book being reviewed and raved about on social media, ultimately pushing her into the zeitgeist of the early 2020s. A fan-favorite, which is mortifying, considering the majority of her fanbase is a convoluted mix of young teens, and mostly women, is “It Ends With Us.”
Shoddy writing, blunt, emotionless dialog, and a concerning amount of references to Ellen DeGeneres apart, the book is inherently a bad piece of fiction. It is as if 50 Shades Of Grey and The Fault In Our Stars had a lovechild, which turned out to be an embarrassment and a family failure.
I could ignore the bad writing for long enough to finish the book – a terrible mistake on my part.
The story is marketed as a searing love triangle between the three main characters, and that’s the main reason I decided to pick it up after hearing people talk about it. Imagine my surprise when I find out one of the romantic interests, who Colleen shows to be the perfect man through almost half of the trajectory, is a domestic abuser.
I was concerned that this seemingly “perfect” man coerces his partner into having sex with him, which is portrayed romantically, and displays bouts of anger very often. He is manipulative, lecherous in the way he talks, and basically a red flag I would tell every woman I love to avoid – yet he is depicted as Prince Charming in the trajectory until he ‘suddenly’ switches up.
There are several graphic scenes with marital rape and abuse, and as a firm believer that trigger warnings are not a part of her plan, Hoover basically allows the reader to jump into the story blindly. Not only is this problematic, but so is her claim that “I write for entertainment purposes only. I don’t write to educate, persuade or inform. This book is different.” She markets and writes this book as one for surface-level entertainment and basically romanticizes an abused woman being rescued and falling for her savior.
Hard-hitting proof of this was her decision to come out with a coloring book for “It Ends With Us” which raised enough furor that she decided to pull it back.
This is not the only instance she writes a book that is horrendous for any young woman’s self-worth and idea of romance and love. “I didn’t fall in love with you… I flew,” she writes in another disappointing book titled “Ugly Love.”
Hoover’s writing is like taking a train to Discomfort Central and taking a long, long stop. In this story, her character is dark and brooding, and has a mysterious past that makes it impossible for him to indulge in any romance other than casual flings. Yet, he controls the life of the female lead, grows increasingly angry if he sees her with any other men, and basically humiliates her time and again.
Ah, the way we grant men medals for complexity and depth when they react childishly instead of going to therapy. Imagine a young impressionable girl reading this and thinking the epitome of romance is ‘fixing’ a man who disrespects her time and again.
It is a common denominator in almost all of Hoover’s work – a female lead’s existence is basically bland and meaningless unless it involves a romantic interest that rescues her and turns her life upside down. Oh, and they fall in love in a couple of days, always -- there is no build-up to the relationship or love where they have revelations about each other as people or become friends. Toxicity from the male lead is forgiven because he is sad, and also handsome.
What can women do but forgive sad men who violate their boundaries because they’re charming and handsome? This happens in “November 9”-- Fallon is left with scars due to an arson attempt from Ben, but it’s all OK because he did not mean for her to suffer from third-degree burns. They end up together, by the way.
Add to this hot mess a dash of lack of diversity, formulaic writing and dialogues reminiscent of Tumblr 2014 and you have a New York Times bestseller. November 9 includes a dialog sequence where the male lead Ben laughs off Fallon’s request for sushi as he orders pad thai, saying, “They are basically the same thing.”
It is also worth noting that in the 24 books Hoover has written, there is none of the ethnic diversity you’d expect – there are basically no characters from any ethnic groups or cultures and no discussion about them either, which is awfully weird since most of her storylines are set in some of the most diverse and metropolitan cities in the world. The normative person in Hoover’s literary universe is white.
Hoover has also been under fire for blocking and ignoring a request from a young girl, a minor to be exact, to hold her 21-year-old son accountable for sexual assaulting her. Hoover however, denied blocking the girl or not taking the allegations seriously, but they were very quickly swept under the rug nonetheless.
As a student of literature, it pained me to see her work be compared to Austen, or for her to be termed the modern-day delegate of romantic fiction. We must understand the importance of responsible writing – “it is fiction” is not an excuse to package concerning ideas and market them as surface-level romance, especially when the main consumers of your craft are young women who are yet to fully develop their positions on romance and love. It takes apart the years of effort done by feminist activists to educate young women about the dangers of control, abuse and manipulation veiled as “I am very traumatized and will defy accountability through guilt-tripping you.”
Dark romances might be ‘fiction’ to Hoover, but they are a nightmarish and unfortunate reality for millions of women in this day and age. For this reason alone, Hoover’s work and the recognition it has received is a huge disservice to her readers. All we can hope for is calling out the publishing industry as readers and authors, and addressing these concerns in the hope of better fiction.