Check out a full video review here.

Treat this entire review as a spoiler

Previous to this, I had only read one other work by Hoover, her debut, self-published novel [b:Slammed|30333938|Slammed (Slammed, #1)|Colleen Hoover|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1464826448l/30333938._SY75_.jpg|18602144]. I hated it. I was happy to leave my experience with Hoover there, but her added popularity over these last couple of years made me curious to maybe give her new work a shot.

Spoiler alert: I hated this one too, though I will admit that it took me a bit to process my feelings because Hoover's work is incredibly emotionally manipulative. I was not unaffected by her story of domestic violence. I think that this is largely why she has so much popularity. People feel things while reading her work and go "wow, that made me feel something" and the critical engagement ends there. If you stop to think AT ALL about this (or I'd guess any of her work), it starts to absolutely fall apart.

I'll get this out of the way: This is barely a romance. Calling this and marketing this as a romance is more manipulation if you ask me. This book makes Hoover's dislike of content warnings make sense, because most of the experience hinges on you thinking this is a romance and being bamboozled by a story of domestic violence. And the reason Hoover can get away with it is because she tacks on another relationship that conveniently stumbles in and ends in a happily ever after, even though it is not the actual relationship that is central to this story.

That secondary relationship is tacked on, as I said, but so are like 15 other elements of this story. Another piece of the emotional manipulation is wringing out every bit of trauma and drama that she can, regardless of if they fit into the story at all. None of these pieces of trauma feel respectfully explored, and instead are added like afterthoughts, all in this journey of wringing emotion out because of circumstance, and not because of fully formed characters, a cohesive plot or responsible or thoughtful messaging.

Even the "regular" elements of this book are bonkers to me. All together, this book ahas an FMC with a family history of domestic violence, she experiences domestic violence, her name is Lily Blossom Bloom and she runs an incredibly successful florist shop, she befriends a couple of millionaires and one of them just wants to work for her for funnies, inexplicably part of this story is told to us through LETTERS TO ELLEN DEGENERES (which you could argue just aged badly and I would say was never a thing that should've happened based on the sheer WTF of it all), the MMC is a neurosurgeon, he has a tragic past revolving around gun violence and the loss of a loved one, he's an abuser, the other love interest was homeless, he has a history of domestic violence, and he deals with suicidal thoughts. I'm not saying that any of this is unrealistic, but that it doesn't fit into this story. It all feels tacked on, like pieces of jewelry Hoover should of taken off before she left the house, instead of topics worthy of respect and consideration.

I have SUCH an issue with the way that domestic violence is used in this book. I have heard from a handful of people who have experienced DV who saw themselves and their experiences reflected here, and I hear that. Again, I am not commenting on realism, but instead on use and messaging. Lily's relationship with Ryle is the center of this book and in an attempt to emotionally manipulate the reader into arriving at "victims of domestic violence are people too!" Hoover romanticizes their relationship through the majority of this book. The framing of their relationship and even of their sex scenes is one of a traditional romance book and it feels so gross to me. Particularly because you get the feeling that you are supposed to be surprised that Ryle is the worst or that things between him and Lily start great and soured, but that man was a walking red flag from the moment that he showed up. He is being romanticized while exhibiting incredibly toxic and abusive behavior from GO. And this isn't just my interpretation. You can tell that there is this gap between Ryle as an abuser and how he's painted by how Hoover's fandom talks about him.

At best, Hoover's writing is aggressively mediocre. At worst, it's painfully obvious and almost juvenile. And I say this not like juvenile is inherently a bad thing, but it is another thing that doesn't fit the story Hoover was attempting to tell.

I honestly do not get the hype.