By Yasmin Jeffery of the ABC
The It Ends With Us movie adaptation is here. Here's why people hate the Colleen Hoover novel so much. Photo: Sony Pictures/Nicole Rivelli
It Ends With Us looks like your average pulpy love-triangle romance novel, if you go by its pastel-pink, flower-filled cover and the genre it purports to belong to.
Even the blurb of Colleen Hoover's 2016 New York Times bestseller promises a "captivating romance with a cast of all-too-human characters".
"It Ends With Us," it continues, "is an unforgettable tale of love that comes at the ultimate price."
Warning: This story contains mentions of rape and descriptions of domestic violence.
While romance does feature in It Ends With Us, it's actually an incredibly graphic story about the intergenerational effects of intimate partner violence.
Its myriad difficult storylines also touch on issues including alcohol abuse, mental illness, rape, suicide, self-harm and graphic violence.
Despite its dark subject matter, It Ends With Us was the most-sold book of 2023 in the US, according to Publishers Weekly, and has over 1 billion hashtags on TikTok.
Now it's been adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Blake Lively (of Gossip Girl fame) and Justin Baldoni (who also directed the film, of Jane The Virgin fame).
So why does It Ends With Us and its author get so much hate online?
First off: Who is Colleen Hoover?
Dubbed "CoHo" by the internet, the 44-year-old writer from Texas started off as a self-published author, which is why she's often accused of being a Wattpad darling (derogatory).
Colleen Hoover's 2016 novel It Ends With Us has become a sleeper hit, topping bestseller lists to this day. Photo: DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS
But in the 12 years since she self-published her first novel as an ebook, CoHo has enjoyed unprecedented mainstream success. As of October 2022, she had sold more than 20 million books.
CoHo has also been dubbed "the queen" of BookTok, which played a big part in the renewed popularity of her books, some of which have been out for the better part of a decade.
Her novels are plot-heavy, lightly smutty and easily digestible. Her female leads often undergo some sort of defining trauma and their love interests are always named something like Tate, Layken or Ridge (those are real examples).
All this is to say, CoHo is the Taylor Swift of darker romance novels.
What is It Ends With Us about?
Warning: Spoilers ahead
It Ends With Us was based on the relationship between Hoover's mother and father.
"I don't have a lot of recollections of what they went through, but I knew that he was abusive, and I never understood how it happened because she was such a strong and independent person," she said of her motivations in 2021.
The novel begins after the unfortunately named protagonist Lily Blossom Bloom, a steampunk (???) florist, has delivered a disastrous eulogy at her abusive father's funeral. In the aftermath, the 23-year-old takes a breather on a Boston rooftop.
It's there that she runs into the fancifully named neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid, who is angrily attempting to destroy a chair after a bad day. Despite this, Lily is instantly attracted to the 29-year-old.
Hoover based It Ends With Us (starring Lively, pictured right, and Justin Baldoni, left) on her mother and father's relationship. Photo: Sony Pictures/Nicole Rivelli
A few months later, they become intensely involved with each other. At the same time, Lily re-reads teen diary entries bizarrely styled as letters to Ellen DeGeneres, when her father's abuse of her mother was at its worst and 15-year-old Lily met her first love, 18-year-old Atlas Corrigan.
It's after an incident with a burnt casserole that Ryle attacks Lily for the first time by aggressively pushing her. He frantically apologises, promising to never hurt her again. When Ryle's sister Allysa asks about Lily's injuries the next day (at a restaurant Atlas happens to own), Ryle lies about the attack.
Atlas, a fellow victim-survivor, doesn't believe her excuses and leaves his phone number for her in case she ever needs help. When Ryle finds out, the physical abuse continues and he attempts to justify his actions by revealing a traumatic tragedy from his childhood.
One night, Lily returns home to find Ryle enraged over her teen relationship with Atlas and he attempts to rape her before physically assaulting her.
Lily leaves Ryle with Atlas's assistance, only to discover she is pregnant with Ryle's baby. The story ends with Lily co-parenting with her abuser, who she has now divorced. Ryle experiences no legal ramifications for his abuse.
Why do people think It Ends With Us is problematic? What is the Colleen Hoover controversy?
Despite its heavy subject matter and the fact It Ends With Us was marketed as a romance, the book doesn't carry any content warnings.
And its graphic content blindsided many readers.
It certainly didn't help things when, in January 2023, the author announced her plan to release a colouring book based on It Ends With Us. The internet … did not take it well.
Following widespread complaints that the planned project trivialised the novel's serious subject matter, CoHo cancelled it.
She wrote on her Instagram story at the time: "The colouring book was developed with Lily's strength in mind, but I can absolutely see how this was tone-deaf."
Why are content warnings so important?
Respect Victoria's director of communications and community change, Jacquie O'Brien, says: "Whilst you can market a book or movie like this as a romance, you absolutely, by virtue of the fact that you are making money off this, have a responsibility to do this safely."
"Content warnings are really important because there are people who are on a whole range of journeys," she says.
"Intimate partner violence … [these] are really serious situations with a lot of trauma attached to them, and you don't want to do harm by not at least allowing people to make a choice on whether they want to engage with this content or not.
"People going to [read or] see this need informed consent."
It Ends With Us is also frequently accused of being a harmful depiction of an abusive relationship
Critics online say It Ends With Us simplifies victim-survivors' experiences at best and romanticises domestic violence at worst.
Responding to this, some It Ends With Us fans point out that fictional characters or stories aren't required to be unproblematic or educational.
But! CoHo said in 2021 that she intended to educate readers with this novel: "I always say I write to entertain, I don't write to inform or to educate. But this book was a different beast."
And whether CoHo intended to romanticise abuse or not, It Ends With Us's readers are romanticising it anyway.
Across social media, many CoHorts express their frustration Lily doesn't end up with Ryle. They describe him not as an abuser, but as a "jerk" - who's still "hot".
One reader admits: "no cuz y'all don't understand how badly i had been rooting for them EVEN AFTER he hurt her the first few times."
Social media aside, is this representation dangerous?
Ms O'Brien does praise how CoHo's book shows that "men who choose to use violence are not monsters [but] easily recognisable people, who are probably in our lives."
But she says depicting a character like Ryle as "strong or masculine" and interlinking that masculinity with violence is dangerous.
"It becomes very dangerous when any form of popular culture depicts someone using violence … as either romanticised or inevitable or a demonstration of love. It's not a demonstration of love, it's a demonstration of terror and violence."
She says stories like It Ends With Us are part of the reason why, as a society, "it's really important we are taught the signs of what's healthy and what's safe and what to do if you or a loved one is in a relationship like this as early as possible".
How does the movie differ from the book?
The movie adaptation of It Ends With Us has been controversial since its announcement, and not just among the book's critics. Fans have big feelings about the project too, from the casting down to the costume design.
While the film follows a similarly pink-tinged, romance-heavy marketing strategy to the book, there's a lot that's different about this telling.
The main characters have been aged up significantly (at the time of writing the book, CoHo didn't know there is no such thing as a 29-year-old neurosurgeon) and, sadly, the infamous steampunk flowers do not feature. There's also a lot less Ellen DeGeneres.
The dialogue and - lack thereof - feels like a huge departure
This is a story that's absolutely benefited from screenwriter Christy Hall's deft hand and from having a slate of talented actors breathe life into it.
But while readers often criticise CoHo's penchant for telling rather than showing with her writing, the It Ends With Us movie could have done with a little more telling than showing.
One of the strengths of the book were Lily's internal musings, where she grapples with the way our culture of internalised misogyny, victim-blaming and toxic masculinity has shaped her and her mother.
Those thought processes were part of what helped It Ends With Us answer the question it set out to: Why it can be so hard to leave an abusive relationship.
Lily's (left) ex Atlas (played by Brandon Sklenar, right) is a fellow victim-survivor and provides vital support for Lily. Photo: Sony Pictures/Nicole Rivelli
But there's been no attempt to externalise those thoughts - whether via dialogue or, as hit-or-miss as it can be, voiceover.
And, unlike in the book, there's no discussion of the fact Lily is privileged enough to be able to leave Ryle immediately, having the money and social supports to be able to do so as soon as she decides to.
The physical abuse happens in flashes, rather than over extended periods
The movie overall is less graphic, with only brief glimpses of the physical abuse and rape Lily's mother experienced at the hands of her father. Ryle's physical abuse of Lily is dispensed with quickly, and is glossed over much faster.
In a departure from the seemingly pro-life stance in the book, where Lily appears resigned to having her abuser's baby, the film frames it like she has a choice, even if she makes the same decision.
The fact Ryle experiences no repercussions for his abuse beyond Lily's decision to divorce him was another major criticism of the book - but the movie doesn't depart from this plot point.
And - also problematically - here, too, Ryle is depicted as broken as a result of his childhood trauma, and therefore deserving of redemption in the form of a relationship with his daughter.
The only real difference to the ending is that Lily tells Ryle she knows none of the abuse he perpetrated against her was an accident, which is a chilling moment - though not necessarily a win for the movie.
In the book, Lily had been forthright with him about it from the start.
[This story was first published by the ABC.
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