The new Blake Lively movie about a romance that turns abusive is adapted from the bestseller by New Adult phenomenon Colleen Hoover. Will it be as popular – and as divisive – as the novel? Warning: This article contains references to domestic violence. When the trailer for It Ends with Us dropped in May, it earned 128 million views in just 24 hours.
The hullabaloo can partly be explained by the fact that the film's co-producer and star is the talented Blake Lively, aka Taylor Swift's friend, aka Ryan Reynolds' wife. But it's mostly because It Ends with Us is based on a best-selling novel by 44-year-old-Texan, Colleen Hoover, who is viewed by millions of Gen-Z women as a goddess, yet has been accused of glamorising domestic abuse. While, for example, The Literary Vault praised the book's "rare sensitivity and nuanced approach", others have suggested it is much more problematic.
"Like too many books and movies, It Ends with Us feeds into the very structures of toxic masculinity that it purports to combat," Jennie Young wrote in a 2022 review of the book in Ms Magazine , and more criticism followed. Cosmopolitan said: "Colleen Hoover's books are extremely popular and leave an impression on young women – Hoover’s primary audience – by casually portraying abuse as 'just how a relationship is supposed to work'". Hoover's humble origins are all part of her myth.
In her early 30s, she was married with three children, living in a trailer in Saltillo, Texas, and struggling to.