Colleen Hoover writes her own ticket to success as ‘It Ends With Us’ hits screens

With Blake Lively as its besieged heroine, the nationwide arrival tomorrow of Sony Pictures’ “It Ends with Us” amounts to a final, cinematic, coronation of mega-selling author Colleen Hoover.

The Sulphur Springs, Texas, native has had nothing less than a one-woman gargantuan impact on publishing – and readers – with a string of self-published romance novels that quickly became New York Times bestsellers and spawned a fervent following.

When “It Ends with Us,” about domestic violence and its continued, insidious legacy, was published in 2016, it took Hoover, who, thanks to a devoted fan base had been charting for five years, to another level, selling eventually 6 million copies and translated into 20-plus languages.

Its phenomenal sales so continued that in January 2022, nearly six years after its initial publication, it ranked Number 1 on the Times list. As if that wasn’t enough, that same year Hoover scored with a mind-boggling accomplishment: listing 6 of the Top 10 paperback fiction books.

A best-selling sequel written at the urging of her fan base, “It Starts with Us” was published in 2022.  In 10 years she has written 20 novels and has sold more books than James Patterson and John Grisham combined.

A NYT profile noted that when on Amazon she self-published “Slammed,” her first young adult novel, she was a social worker making $9 an hour, living in a single wide trailer with her long-distance truck driver husband and their three sons. Her royalty check? A whopping $30.

Months later, royalties had jumped to $50,000 and she was on her way to making publishing history – her way.  Hoover has written not only romance novels but a ghost story and psychological thrillers, touching on topics like homelessness, drug abuse and poverty, and marked by outrageous plot twists and steamy sexual situations. The majority of her readers are women.

The film version of “It Ends with Us” stars Lively and Justin Baldoni as her domestic abuser.  Baldoni is best known for the comedy series “Jane the Virgin.” He optioned the book in 2019 and not only costars but is the film’s producer and director.

The film begins as Blakely’s Maine native Lily Bloom has opened a Boston business, a floral shop and, tentatively begun a relationship with Baldoni’s Ryle Kincaid, a neurosurgeon.

Ryle, it quickly turns out, has issues that involve beating Lily. No one says, “Physician, heal thyself” but perhaps they should.

Lily’s life is complicated by the return to Boston of her first love Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar, best known for the “Yellowstone” spin-off “1923”).

Romantic passion, childhood trauma, mad jealousy – Ryle must confront his demons as Lily must learn just how to end all of this.

“It Ends With Us” opens Wednesday

 

Colleen Hoover attends the Time100 Gala, celebrating the 100 most influential people in the world, at Lincoln Center in April 2023, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

 

 

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