By P.A. Geddie
New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover’s romance novel It Ends With Us was made into a movie that releases in theaters on August 9.
Hoover published the book in 2016 and describes it as “the hardest book I’ve ever written.” The story centers around Lily Bloom, a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood to find a new life in Boston and chase a lifelong dream of opening her own business. She meets charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid, sparking an intense connection, but as the two fall in love, Lily begins to see sides of him that remind her of her parents’ relationship. When Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan, reenters her life, she realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future.
As of 2019, the novel sold more than a million copies worldwide, and it was translated into more than 20 languages. In January 2022, It Ends with Us was #1 on The New York Times best sellers list.
Filming of the movie adaptation began in May 2023 with Blake Lively as Lily. Ryle is played by Justin Baldoni — who also serves as director. Brandon Sklenar is Atlas. The soundtrack music list releases once the film premieres but fans can get a feel of it in the movie trailer featuring “My Tears Ricochet” by Taylor Swift.
The story was inspired by Hoover’s personal experience as a child growing up in a household with domestic violence. She spoke with Jenna Bush Hager in a Today show interview last year.
“My mother and father divorced when I was two. One of my earliest memories is him throwing a TV at her,” she says. “When I wrote this book I wanted to understand my mother more. She’s a very strong, independent woman. My hero. She loved my dad. But I knew things that had happened between them. It’s extremely hard to leave when you love the person that’s hurting you. My mother had to make that decision and there are good days on the back end of that.”
Margaret Colleen Fennell was born on December 11, 1979, in Sulphur Springs, Texas, to Vannoy Fine and Eddie Fennell. She grew up in rural Hopkins County in Saltillo, Texas —population 300 — located about 16 miles east of the county seat of Sulphur Springs and seven miles west of Mount Vernon. An unincorporated town, Saltillo has its own post office and a school district. Colleen graduated from Saltillo High School in 1998.
She was 16 years old when she started seeing William Heath Hoover. They married in 2000 and have three sons — Cale, Levi, and Beckham.
In 2004, Hoover earned a bachelor’s degree in social work from Texas A&M-Commerce and worked in that industry throughout her 20s.
She was 31 years old when she found herself “bored” as her kids had their busy lives and her husband was on the road as a truck driver.
Hoover wanted to write as far back as she can remember. In the Today interview, she said having a sister three years older who could read and write before she could made her want to do that too.
“I had stories I wanted to tell. I was very disappointed I didn’t get to write my first story my first day of kindergarten.”
Writing was always a thread in her life and she considered majoring in journalism going into college but set that aside for a career in social work that would better help support her family in rural Texas. Living in a single wide trailer house, it was a good life she said, but they struggled financially so she put her dreams on hold.
By 2011, the Hoover household was settled into a good routine and she had a little time on her hands. Inspired by a song, “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise,” by the Avett Brothers, she began to write a story about the magic and confusion of first love, as two young people forge an unlikely bond before discovering that fate has other plans for them. One line from the song in particular, “Decide what to be and go be it,” is incorporated throughout her story.
She said she didn’t call it a book. It was just a “story” she’d written and she’d tell her family about it and ask if they wanted to read it. She had no intention of getting published.
Christmas 2011 was a popular year in Hopkins County for book lovers to receive Kindle digital readers. Her grandmother received one and wanted to read Hoover’s story on it so Hoover researched how to get a Microsoft Word document onto Kindle. That led her to the world of Amazon self publishing.
On New Year’s Day 2012, Colleen uploaded her book to Amazon so her grandmother and others could read it on their Kindles. By May of that year Slammed landed on the New York Times best seller list as a self published book.
Hoover kept writing and and just six months later self published Point of Retreat, a followup to Slammed. That book also made it onto the New York Times best seller list.
Before the end of 2012, Atria Books picked up the novels and became her publisher, and others joined over the years including Grand Central Publishing, Montlake Romance, and HarperCollins Publishers.
In the last 12 years, she’s published 24 books, some of them in multiple languages for fans all around the world, mostly based in the romance and psychological thriller categories. Seventeen so far made the New York Times best sellers list.
She’s sold well over 20 million copies of her books.
Reflecting on her success, Alexandra Alter of The New York Times wrote in 2022, “To say she’s currently the best-selling novelist in the United States, to even compare her to other successful authors who have landed several books on the best seller lists, fails to capture the size and loyalty of her audience.
“She holds six of the top 10 spots on The New York Times’s paperback fiction best-seller list, a stunning number of simultaneous best sellers from a single author. She has sold 8.6 million print books this year alone — more copies than the Bible, according to NPD BookScan.”
Her devoted fans call her CoHo and themselves CoHorts.
In 2015, Hoover’s novel Confess won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance. The book was adapted into a seven-episode American drama television series premiering in April 2017. Directed and screen written by Elissa Down, the series stars Katie Leclerc and Ryan Cooper and tells the story of a young woman with a difficult past who falls in love with a man who is keeping a secret from her. It features a cameo appearance of Hoover in the first episode. She’s seen buying a painting at an art show.
Hoover was named one of the 100 Most Influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023. Jenna Bush Hager writes on the award website.
“If you’re paying attention you will see Colleen Hoover’s books everywhere you look, and more specifically, young people devouring them. Like many, I tore through her 2016 book It Ends With Us on a flight. Colleen has mastered emotionally fraught narratives — and women are paying attention. Whether you count yourself a Colleen Hoover fan or not, her influence on the publishing industry is undeniable.”
With such enormous success, Hoover could live anywhere she wants. She chooses the countryside of East Texas. Home is currently a peaceful lakeside, nature-friendly place she and her family moved into in April 2023. Her mother lives about 20 minutes away. Hoover remained close to her father until he died when she was 25.
She and her sisters Lin and Murphy started a nonprofit called The Bookworm Box in 2015. The organization promotes literacy and supports various other charitable endeavors through fundraisers including an annual book convention, Book Bananza. The 2024 event was held in June at The Gaylord Texan in Grapevine near Dallas. It was announced earlier this year that it would be the last.
“While it has been a joy, it has also been a huge commitment of time and resources beyond our current capacities,” Hoover said on their Facebook page, adding, “We will continue to support this magnificent book world in whatever ways we can moving forward. There is a desire for readers to meet their favorite authors, and while we will not be one of the avenues to make that happen after this year, we hope to still be a part of the magic in some way.”
A storefront on Main Street in Sulphur Springs and a subscription service ended in 2023.
To date, The Bookworm Box organization has donated more than a million dollars to charities.
Hoover’s last book, “Too Late,” is a psychological thriller about a woman caught in a dangerous web of obsessive love, trying to find a way out before it’s too late that came out in June 2023.
After writing about two books a year for 12 years, she hasn’t written anything new for a while. Perhaps partly resting on her laurels, she’s also taking a break from the unfortunate negative behavior that rises from a segment of the human race that lashes out in angry and hateful ways — those people can be especially cruel to those with great success.
In a recent post on her official Facebook page, she addressed her disappointment in the haters, primarily those skulking about the social media platform TikTok.
“Every single human on the planet now has their very own podium and microphone,” she says.
“Every conversation that ends up online is accompanied by a layer of fear of what the backlash will be. Because nothing is without backlash anymore.”
She’s setting her boundaries and preparing for where her journey takes her next.
“I have not succeeded because of anything other than an enjoyment of writing and doing my best to leave this world a better place,” she says. “To be able to say that I have very few regrets and I am proud of who I am and proud of those in my life and am deeply loved by my immediate family is literally the accomplishment I hoped for as a child. The rest is just fluff.”
With It Ends With Us coming out in theaters the CoHorts community is likely to expand tremendously. Knowing her writing continues to help others is important.
“It’s been heartwarming to read how my mother’s story has given strength to other women to be able to leave their situations.”
Hoover watched the movie for the first time with her mother.
“This is the book that means the most to me. I’ve tried to have other books adapted and it didn’t quite go to fruition but I’ve been praying this would happen for four or five years now. It means so much to me. I watched it the first time with my mother who inspired the story so words can’t express how amazing this whole experience is.”
In a recent interview by Denny Directo with Entertainment Tonight, Hoover and director Justin Baldoni talk about the story.
“The readers have been so supportive throughout this whole journey for me from the very beginning,” Hoover says. “It’s been almost 10 years now since I started writing this book and I want them to be happy and I think that they’re going to be happy.”
Baldoni says it was important that the movie honor survivors of domestic violence and they partnered with the organization No More to advise them throughout the making of the movie.
“It has the potential to affect millions of lives,” Baldoni says. “This is a movie about love and hope but we don’t shy away from the issue. It was important that we honored all of the Lilys that experience what she experiences.”
Earlier this year it was announced that Hoover’s novel Verity is also being adapted into a movie.
Verity was self-published in 2018 before being acquired by Grand Central Publishing in 2021. It grew into a phenomenon, spending months on The New York Times bestsellers list.
Hoover’s stories are sure to resonate with a huge portion of the human population for a long time to come. Get the books, see the movies, and keep up with what’s next on colleenhoover.com.
