ONTD Original: Why Colleen Hoover and "It Ends With Us" is terrible and why you shouldn't see it

[arilicious]

So as this long-awaited movie based on the book "It Ends With Us" is coming out soon, I hate to do any promotion for it, but I think it's important to list the reasons why this book and it's author are terrible, and why you shouldn't see them. I've only read two of her books, this one and "Verity", so I can't comment on her other ones that I know are also highly problematic but since I haven't read them, I'm only reviewing these ones.

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In this video, youtuber "SAVY WRITES BOOKS" made, she gives a rundown of the book, why the main relationship in this book is toxic, abusive, and all around awful.
For those who don't wish to watch the whole video, here's a rundown of the book. TW: DV, SA
[Spoiler (click to open)]

• So the main character, Lily Blossom Bloom who owns a flower shop (yes, I'm serious), meets gorgeous, rich, perfect neurosurgeon Ryle (pronounced like Kyle with a R) Kincaid on a rooftop. She's there after her abusive father's funeral where she couldn't say anything positive about him, but sees this hot guy throwing chairs and thinking "oh he's so sexy".
• The novel gives flashbacks (with her writing diary entries/letters to ELLEN DEGENERES) of her falling for her first boyfriend, Atlas (what is with these names?) who was homeless and later joined the marines. Her abusive father caught them having sex and beat him up.
• She says her father was only abusive towards her mother, but never to her (which is a lie).
• Months after that first meeting with Ryle, after she starts planning out her (gothic) flower shop (cause she's not like other girls), a woman, Allysa with 2 Ls, walks in asking to work for free. Turns out, she's Ryle's sister.
• Ryle shows up to her apartment knocking on every door of the building until she agrees to have sex with him. She agrees because he's wearing scrubs and he's soooo hot. He falls asleep.
• 53 days later, the flower shop finally opens, and who's the first customer? Ryle!
• At a party, Lily notices that Ryle has a blown-up photo of her in his apartment that he took of her that first night without her knowledge. She says this is weird, but ignores it. He then assaults her, her gay friend does nothing to stop it.
• Ryle previously wasn't into long-term relationships, but Lily's just ~different~ so he's in love with her.
• We learn Allyssa isn't just working for free because she's bored, but also because she's dealing with infertility. Of course, she gets pregnant anyways.
• Lily and Ryle go to a restaurant, who's there? Atlas! But oh no, she can't have her ex and her new bf in the same room!
• Turns out Ryle and Allysa had another sibling: a brother named EMERSON who died when they were kids.
• Ryle hurts his hand after dropping a casserole and Lily laughs. What does he do? He pushes her. But it's all her fault, she shouldn't laugh at him, he's a SURGEON, he NEEDS his hands! He apologizes and all is good.
• Back to the restaurant: Atlas sees her bruise, confronts her, says she needs to leave him, but she denies it. Later Atlas gives her his number in case she "needs" it. He puts it on a piece of paper rather than in her phone.
• Ryle said in the beginning he didn't want kids. Allysa says "he'll change his mind."
• Suddenly Ryle and Lily go to Vegas and elope. They've been dating 6 months.
• Ryle finds Atlas' number and pushes her down the stairs. He insists "you fell!" Allysa thinks Ryle should tell the truth to Lily of what happened with their brother, Emerson: when Ryle was a kid, he accidentally shot him, so he has a lot of anger issues and PTSD. Lily forgives him AGAIN.
• Ryle buys a new apartment without Lily knowing.
• Allysa names her daughter Rylee after her shithead brother who she knows is an abuser.
• Ryle finds her old diary entries/letters to Ellen and thinks she's still in love with Atlas, and r*pes her. She fights him off while defending herself. She runs to Atlas for help. She goes to a hospital but she can't go to the one Ryle works at, not because she's afraid of running into him, but because she doesn't want him to lose his job. She doesn't report the attack. But she can't have a CT scan anyways because, what do you know, she's pregnant!
• Lily's not too happy about the pregnancy, and wishes to keep it a secret until she can't anymore. Abortion is never brought up as option, it just doesn't exist. Meanwhile, Ryle leaves to study in England for a bit.
• Lily tells Allysa all the abuse she suffered, and Allysa is surprisingly supportive (never mind the fact she just excused his behavior earlier). Ryle returns and sees she's pregnant.
• Lily can't decide if she'll stay with Ryle or not til after the baby's born (because apparently pregnant women can't make decisions).
• Lily tells him "I would never keep you from your child"
• Her water breaks, Ryle's there, she takes a shower, he sees her belly for the first time and tells her how beautiful she is while pregnant with his baby *barf*
• She gives birth immediately after arriving in the hospital. Names the baby (a girl) after Emerson (nicknamed Emmy) after Ryle's brother (why?). 30 seconds after the baby's out says "I want a divorce" cause pregnant women can't make decisions but she's not pregnant now, so it's all good.
• Allows Ryle to have unsupervised contact with the baby and a co-parenting relationship. Because abusers and rapists always deserve to have custody of their children, right? "He only hurt me, he won't hurt the baby! That never happens!"
• Tells her baby "it ends with us" (meaning the cycle of abuse), but does it really?
• Epilogue: they're now divorced. She drops her baby off with Ryle, meets with Atlas, tells him the baby's middle name: Dory (after Finding Nemo, she's an Ellen fan!), she restarts things with Atlas. Final line: "You can stop swimming now, Lily, we finally reached the shore."

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This other book of hers, thriller "Verity" contains a lot of pro-life propaganda. TW: violence, child death, abortion, anti-abortion rhetoric
[Spoiler (click to open)]

• Struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh is hired by Jeremy Crawford to finish his incapacitated wife, best-selling author Verity Crawford's series.
• Lowen first meets Jeremy after witnessing a very graphic car crash and gets blood on her shirt, so he offers her his shirt in a bathroom (why?).
• Jeremy's eyes are chartreuse.
• Lowen had an ex-boyfriend named Amos who liked to choke her (as a kink), because kinky sex is bad.
• Jeremy and Verity had twin daughters, Chastin and Harper who have both since died. They have another son Crew, who was conceived in a canoe.
• Lowen (having never read any of Verity's works) is going through her things to get inspiration for the project and discovers a manuscript of an autobiography Verity wrote. (here's like a story within a story).
• Quick rundown of the autobiography: Verity writes how she fell in love Jeremy because the sex was just sooooo hot, then she got pregnant with the twins and wasn't too happy about it but Jeremy loved her pregnant body while she struggled with body dysmorphia and tried to give herself an abortion (cause legal abortions, again, don't exist, even though this book is set in modern times and was published in 2018, before Roe was overturned), but fails. She also struggles with post-partum depression and has a hard time bonding with her twins. Verity gets their sex life back by sucking him while he sleeps (!). She starts to believe Harper will one day kill her sister, so she now loves Chastin and hates Harper. Jeremy doesn't like that Verity loves one child and not the other, so Jeremy angrily throws a plate of food. She conceives Crew in a canoe to keep Jeremy around and hires a nanny to raise him since they have money now. Then years later Chastin dies of an allergic reaction and Jeremy never wants to have sex anymore cause he's grieving, so then Verity kills Harper in a "canoe accident" with Crew in the canoe. She then intentionally crashes her car in a tree, leaving her incapacitated.
• Lowen repeatedly says Verity is "evil" because she wasn't happy about being pregnant and tried to terminate "Jeremy's" babies and she didn't deserve to have her babies. Because apparently women who don't like being pregnant or try to have an abortion are evil and are going to murder a full-grown kid later!
• Lowen meanwhile falls for Jeremy (even though he's married and his wife is incapacitated) and sees him as this poor, poor guy who lost his beloved children to this evil woman and he has no idea about it.
• Jeremy slut-shames a random woman he knows who he runs into in the store for cheating on her husband (foreshadowing hypocrite much?). Lowen's turned on.
• Youngest child Crew plays with knives and says "mommy talks to me".
• Lowen's 32 and worries about having a baby and since Verity didn't deserve to be a mom, she thinks she'd be better at it.
• Jeremy mentions never taking Verity's writing career seriously, saw it as a "just a hobby".
• Verity left teeth marks on the bed post (!), so Lowen jerks off.
• Lowen thinks Verity could she be faking her injuries even though we saw her brain scan and does things to provoke her. Lowen and Jeremy have unprotected sex on her birthday and it's soooo hot.
• Lowen thinks Crew could be evil since he saw his sister die, similar to how Verity thought her daughter was evil. Since Verity's not here to take care of him, Lowen needs to stay around and put Verity in a home.
• Verity interrogates Crew who says "mommy told me not to answer these questions" and he cuts his tongue on the knife.
• Lowen tries to convince Jeremy that Verity's faking her injury, so she gives him the manuscript to show what a horrible person Verity is. He threatens to go to the police unless she stops faking it. Verity snaps out of her "coma" and tries to explain (what about the brain scans?)
• Jeremy doesn't let her explain, instead just tries to strangle her. Lowen says "no don't! Let's not strangle her, let's asphyxiate her and make it look like an accident!" Verity's now dead.
• Seven months later: Lowen's 7 months pregnant now (do the math). Lowen then finds a letter Verity wrote explaining that the manuscript was really just a writing exercise recommended by her publisher and her daughter's death was truly an accident. Jeremy found the manuscript, thought Verity was guilty, so he tried to kill her by driving the car into a tree and placing her in the driver's seat (how?). She then faked her injuries and brain damage (again, HOW?!). However, Lowen decides, "well, Jeremy and I killed her, I can't tell him this, he'll be too upset, so I'm just gonna eat this letter (literally) and pretend this didn't happen, so now me, Jeremy, Crew and our new baby will be a happy family without that baby-killing evil bitch".

Other controversies/discussion:
-For those who didn't read all that, both of those two books feature toxic relationships with terrible men that we as the readers are supposed to admire. In Verity a male character[Spoiler (click to open)]kills his wife (whether or not it's for justifiable reasons is up to the reader)and a female character is okay with it because "she deserved it".
-In It Ends With Us, main character falls for a clearly toxic guy who essentially stalks her until she gives into him, but we're meant to see it as okay because "he's hot", while she constantly makes excuses for his behavior. While one could interpret this is how abuse victims can often "love" their abusers despite their behavior, many readers blame Lily as the "bad one" for causing his toxic behavior by still harping feelings for her ex (or you know, you can't just discuss things with your spouse rather than resort to violence?)
-A female character can't exist in a Colleen Hoover book without either having kids or being pregnant by the end of the book. And not only that, but a female character must love being a mom or love being pregnant and if she doesn't, it's considered "bad" or "evil". Abortion (through legal means) is never discussed, no matter what the woman's current relationship status is, or whether this is wanted pregnancy, it's never presented as an option. If a female character becomes pregnant, that's it, she's having a baby, whether or not she wants to, and regardless of how shitty the dad is, he has to stay around because "babies need their dads".
-Releasing a coloring book for "It Ends with Us". Because we all need a coloring book for a book about domestic violence that appeals to young teens! The book was later pulled.
-In 2022, a Twitter user posted something about Colleen's son Levi sexually harassing her when she was 16 (he was 21 at the time). Colleen then blocked her.
-Actual quote from her book "Ugly Love":
Thank you for this baby," she says from the backseat. "He's beautiful."
I laugh. "You're responsible for the beautiful part, Rachel. The only thing he got from me were his balls."
She laughs. She laughs hard. "Oh my god, I know," she says. "They're so big."
We both laugh our son's big balls.

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