‘You know, you want to think you’re… You want to think you’re not like other women, but you are, you know. You’re still… that’s still how the rest of the world, how men are going to see you. Like, I know you hate labels, but like… You live in a woman’s body. You’re vulnerable. No matter what you think, you’re vulnerable, and sometimes, you’ll need other people. Friends. Me.’
- Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
TW: Rape, Abuse
Photo Link: Echo Wang
Why I dislike Colleen Hoover : The decline of reading critically
Colleen Hoover is an American author who rose to fame after her books got popular on “Book Tok.” Book Tok is a “side” of tik tok that reads and reviews books. Her most popular novels are November 9, Ugly Love, Verity and It ends with us. Personally I’ve only read It ends with us, but from excerpts of her novels I don’t plan on reading them.
Anna Todd is a popular fanfic author who wrote the infamous After series. So popular it got picked up for…. How many movies? Too many. (4) Anna and Colleen both have two things in common. Both terrible popular writers who romanticize and write hard topics beyond their writing skills.
Even though my dislike for her is strong, there are a few things that I think she has accomplished. She became a popular known-romance author. Her novels are easily accessible because of the simplicity of them. I can admit that! I believe that readers of Colleen Hoover should develop better reading comprehension skills.
I feel so strongly about my dislike of Colleen Hoover because I’ve read many, many romances. I’m a very picky romance reader. I can’t stand abusive, toxic, possessive men. Why would I want to surround myself around men like that? Now my preference strongly influences my dislike but not fully. Colleen Hoover doesn’t believe in Trigger warnings. Trigger warnings aren’t new, but to the modern political world people don’t need them! But here's the thing, Colleen Hoover doesn’t use them! Despite her constant use of rape, abuse, violence in almost all of her novels. Now this is debatable, why would this be bad? Because she believes it “Spoils” the story. Telling me that she uses these real life traumas solely on plot twists. If you look at most of her reviews from stans most will say they LOVED the plot twists. That is what Collen Hoover is, a “Romance” writer who writes rape as a plot twists. These characters do have “Happy Endings.” Spoiler for november 9 : She gets with the guy who burned her house down. Caused the burn damage on her skin and killed her mother in the fire. If that’s not a meet cute, I don’t know what is.
Colleen Hoover also included a rape scene in her novel November 9. Later apologizing and having it removed from the novel. She later deleted her apology from facebook and never spoke about it again. Now this is relevant to Colleen Hoover’s character. When a girl online spoke about the sexual assault against her son, Colleen Hoover blocked the girl and continued to defend her son. Now of course not everything on the internet is true, but with the way she writes men makes me wonder how she views men. She also markets her novels as romance.
Is simplistic writing bad? Of course not, simple language is what gets people reading. Most people wouldn’t read if they started with Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I don’t hate Colleen Hoover fans, or the younger teenage girls for enjoying it. I just wish that the romance genre, although dominated by women, was less misogynistic and saw female characters as true, fleshed out characters. I believe that Colleen Hoover could improve the quality of her craft and her writing, by not calling her novels “Romance” and picking up a dictionary once in a while.
I think the moral of this story is that not all popular writers are good, some just get lucky.
having an imagination like mine is a wonder and a curse. i feel so much and create so much but most of what it chooses to do is create an alternate reality for me to hide in. a world where i get everything i want and i have become everything i have ever wanted to be and i am beautiful and witty and smart and impressive and sparkling. but the funniest part of all is that i suffer there too. sometimes even more than i do here. but the difference is that, in my head, someone is there to hold me.
i highly recommend for women and girls to be intellectually curious and difficult to shame
🤦♀️
Barbie + Blonde Male Fragility Reviews (insp):
You belonged in the library, as much as any book.
- The Sorcery of Thorns
i'm so fascinated by the "just ken." in the context of the tagline (she's everything, he's just ken) it makes it sound like ken is just an accessory to barbie and is nothing without her, but in the actual movie in the speech barbie gives, she turns the phrase on its head. ken isn't an accessory to barbie, he isn't the attention barbie gives him, he's just ken. and that's not even mentioning the "she's everything" part of the tagline and how it goes with gloria's speech of women having to fulfill the impossible task of fitting into every box and juggle conflicting expectations and roles just to be liked by society. the tagline represents opposite ends of a spectrum but by the end of the movie barbie and ken meet in the middle, where they're each allowed to be their own person independent of the expectations and insecurities they've been operating on. this movie, man
<3
starry nights, enemies to lovers, annotations, graffiti, mixtapes, art galleries, anklets, sunsets, heart-shaped lockets, bonfires, libraries, constellations, love letters, soft lighting, messy hair, ice cream parlours, misted windows, blueberries, full moons, dark clouds, red roses
sometimes reading the book isn't enough, i need to physically get pushed off a cliff by henry winter