How do you sell more books than God? For author Colleen Hoover, the answer involves hitting readers over the head with storylines so kooky they either immediately toss the book away or buy the other 25 she wrote.
If it’s a plan, it’s working. Since self-publishing her first book in 2012, Hoover has become a titan in the industry. In 14 years, she’s churned out 26 books, dominating New York Times bestselling lists, and driving women of all ages into full-body sobs or outright rage. In 2022, she sold more books than the Bible. Reminders of Him, in theaters March 13, is her third novel to be developed into a movie (and the first for which Hoover wrote the screenplay), following 2024’s It Ends With Us and 2025’s Regretting You. And there’s already another Hoover joint on the way with Verity, starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, set to release in October. So why aren’t Hoover’s films inspiring the same fiery passion as her books?
Part of Hoover’s appeal comes from the author’s refusal to stick to a set category for her books. She’s a New Adult author, using the often formulaic plot devices from Young Adult fiction but combining them with sensual descriptions of pleasure and sex usually reserved for erotic romance. This means that one book can be a rom-com, the next a mystery novella, the next a steamy thriller. Her stories include a woman falling in love with a DEA agent while trying to escape a drug dealing boyfriend; a drug-induced memory wipe between two lovers; a summer fling while a woman investigates her father’s mysterious death; or a double affair that ends in two deaths. But while Hoover’s book empire remains steady — she published Woman Down, another NYT Bestseller, in January — the same can’t be said for her films. Hoover’s books inspire obsession, rage, devotion, the kind of energy that makes people purchase limited edition copies or declare themselves her biggest haters. But while each of the Hoover adaptations have made their money back at the box office, the cultural return on each film is shrinking.
It Ends With Us made $205 million on a $25 million budget, but it was overshadowed by ongoing lawsuits between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively, after Lively accused Baldoni, the director, of sexual harassment, an unsafe work environment, and planning a social media smear campaign against her. (Baldoni denied the allegations and filed a countersuit.) It didn’t help that the film, about the difficulty of escaping abusive relationships, was marketed as a feel-good romance.
That energy continued with Hoover’s next movie, Regretting You, which charts the aftermath of a car crash that kills a girl’s father and aunt — only for her to eventually find out the two were having a years-long affair. It made $90 million on a $30 million budget, a successful return by anyone’s standards. But many of Hoover’s fans outright rejected it for glossing over gritty details like the family struggling with finances for full focus on the teenage love story, posting viral videos of audiences laughing at melodramatic scenes in the theater. There’s no box office numbers on Reminders of Him yet. But all signs ahead of the movie’s release point to a growing exhaustion with Hoover’s films, which is a shame. Because Reminders of Him might be her most passable film yet.
Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe) and Scotty Landry (Rudy Pankow) in ‘Reminders of Him.’
Michelle Faye / Universal Pictur
Set in a nondescript but decidedly Wyoming-esque small town, Reminders of Him is a 114-minute speedrun through family trauma, grief, and the carceral state. Audiences are immediately introduced to Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe), a newly released inmate out on parole. In her first moments on screen, the down-on-her-luck protagonist walks up to a memorial cross on the highway and kicks at it until it comes loose. But her quest is quickly revealed. That cross belonged to her late boyfriend Scotty (Rudy Pankow). She went to prison for his death, but he always hated memorials. And she’s in town to meet their five-year-old daughter for the very first time.
Diem (Zoe Kosovic) is in the custody of her grandparents Patrick and Grace Landry (Bradley Whitford and Lauren Graham) and doesn’t know anything about the mother who gave birth to her while handcuffed to a hospital bed. The Landrys hate Kenna — she was driving the car that killed their son Scotty and is the reason Diem is growing up without either parent. When Kenna tries to build a life for her daughter, Scotty’s best friend Ledger (Tyriq Withers) secretly helps her out, driving her places, offering her a job, even telling her about her daughter when she’s served a restraining order from the Landrys. But when their relationship turns romantic, everyone has to decide if forgiveness is on the table. All the while, Kenna has to deal with being in the same town where she fell in love and lost Scotty. “There was before you, and there was during you,” Kenna writes in her battered diary. “For some reason, I never thought there would be an after you.”
Withers and Monroe don’t have half the dialogue to justify their steamy looks, or the constant, chest-heaving moments in the rain. But the end result is an almost-restrained romance that layers in grief without making it laughable. And talk about a surprise twist — I never thought I would see the day when a Hoover film actually made salient points about the ineffective nature of the U.S. prison system.
People like Hoover books specifically because of their wacky premises and shocking dialogue. It Ends With Us is about a woman writing letters to Ellen Degeneres, and never sending them. She names her daughter after Dory from Finding Nemo. The main character in November 9 is a burn victim who gets reprimanded for how she makes people feel when they look at her face. And Ugly Love has the perhaps the most widely shared Hoover dialogue: two characters laughing over how large their infant son’s genitals are. During the pandemic, these unexpected plot points drove readers to Hoover’s work. And even when backlash hit in the form of literary criticism, it still drove sales. On BookTok, Hoover was so heavily recommended from 2020 to 2024 that combing her books for the most unrealistic dialogue and character decisions became a minor trend. Hoover’s added success came from people baffled about her popularity, with thousands of BookTok users purchasing beloved Hoover novels to try and figure out why people loved them so much.
Reminders of You lands firmly between a Mother’s Day movie and a future airplane watch. In a Hollywood ecosystem that seems determined to cling onto existing IP, that’s pretty much a success, especially since all of Hoover’s movies have delivered modest returns on their initial budgets. And it’s also the first of Hoover’s films to get even close to passable, something that would be considered growth for any other author. But restraint isn’t why Hoover is popular. Her books inspire passion in part because they themselves refuse to be constrained. They’re not just about romance, they’re about having sex on the floor, gut wrenching affairs, violence and anger and double crossing people so many times a reader’s head spins. And as much as people love to love Hoover, they love to hate her any more. But there has to be something over-the-top in the text — or on the screen — to stoke the explosive nature of that drive. Mid didn’t get Hoover her fans. And it certainly won’t keep them.
