Critics

What do Critics say about Colleen Hoover? 

Colleen Hoover has somewhat been an author in the shadows. Although she is recently new in popularity status, her writing has been around for about a decade now. When taking a deeper dive into what the critics and fellow readers think about Hoover, there is an uprising look into the question “Does Colleen Hoover deserve all her praise?”. Most critics would argue that her work is found to have “unrealistic and immature plots and writing styles”. Genres, characters, books, and writing styles all have a variety of contradicting views almost simply because praise and criticism are issues from a reader’s personal perspective. Many people criticize how “basic” Colleen Hoover’s writing style is. R. Bradford from  The Gator’s Eye states just this. 

The critiques of Hoover’s writing really revolves around her structure of writing and the plot that puts the story line in place. Everyone has heard of the predictable love story of meeting someone in an unforeseen time, ending up falling in love and then there is a sudden obstacle with another person that comes between their relationship. Well, this is exactly how most of Colleen’s romance books fall into place. It is reasonably argued that her style is plain, but still holds an attention grab. Although her plot line is basic, yet suspenseful in her own way, her sequence of text and structural choices help contribute to the reader's interpretation of the text. Bradford states that although she brings depth into her books he doesn’t think that she accommodates the skills to properly execute it.

Taking a further dive into Colleen as an author, Liora Picker from The Daily Targum argues that Hoover has had a deal of strategic marketing. Although this has nothing to do with her writing style as it is, it is an important factor because her marketing is how she got here today. When she released her first book “Slammed”, she distributed free copies to the public just to get a good deal of people to read it and eventually spread the word on the book through word-of-mouth. This quickly arose and she accomplished maintaining a strong presence in the literary community. 

Subsequently, strategic marketing, though, cannot be the end all factor of a quality novel. Her novels are found to be very captivating because she likes to take an out-of-left-field approach in her plots. Hoover is most definitely known for her shocking twists. The Daily Targum touches on how her fan base is screaming, crying and clutching over her books because the characters and structure make the reader so driven to keep reading. This source ultimately touches on how evocative her writing is from start to finish. 

Colleen has had a lot of great, successful books, but one that doesn’t seem to leave the media is her best seller It Ends With Us. An article in Slate.com written by Chels Upton, strongly swades readers on their outlook of the book. This book as everyone has heard is about a romance involving domestic violence. Persuasive criticism of Hoover’s work in relation to It Ends With Us, is that she romanticizes toxic behavior. Upton exemplifies that romanticizing abusive behavior in literature turns the abuse into something positive that draws readers to root for the couple. The fear is for younger girls who read this pornophobic material because the toxic love in fictional stories that is attracting this demographic has become the normalized standards for a relationship. 

The Daily Targum has also piggy-backed off this idea of newer generations of females that view love and relationship standards unlike how things were in the older generations. Teenagers have noticed evident change in their relationships compared to the older generations. Instead of having a love or a special connection, there is toxic drama and lust. 

Mayi Hughes from The Harvard Crimson is a very passionate writer about her experience with Hoover books. She shows how strongly shameful she is about even reading one of her books in spite of what she has seen about people raving over them on TikTok. She states that her “shame of being found reading Colleen Hoover stemmed from a culture of intellectual snobbery…” This, let alone her personal beliefs, gives any reader of this site a different perspective on Colleen’s books. Upston uses the word “snobbery” as a term to describe being an intellect of feeling superior to a mass culture due to status and impracticability of the types of culture you consume. 

There is obvious criticism of how Colleen Hoover writes and how “trashy” and “simplistic” her style is, but by the end of Upston’s review, they state that they plan to lose themself in as much of this “trashy” literature just as much as they do with their “trashy” television. The perspective between literature and television in a critical standpoint are perceived in different ways. Literature being viewed as immature and trashy gets more attention rather than when television does, which is a prominent issue with backlash that author’s get for their work.