The appeal of Colleen Hoover books on teenage girls.
What makes Colleen Hoover books so attractive to teenage girls?
Colleen Hoover is a 42 year old Texas born author of young adult fiction and romance novels who’s popularity has risen rapidly on the social media app TikTok and has been popular amongst teenage girls (me being one of them), but why have these seemingly basic romance books received the attention they have?.
I first discovered Hoover through TikTok, more specifically book tok as I would consider myself an avid reader so I like to go on there to get recommendations on new exciting books. When scrolling through the videos under the hashtag booktok, I noticed a lot of videos displaying one book in particular - ‘it ends with us’ by Colleen Hoover so I thought I would buy it and give it a read to find out what all the hype was about. From the first page I could already tell that this book was an easy read due to its lack of complex vocabulary and how casual and informal the writing style was, im not saying this is a bad thing, I love an easy read to get me out of a reading slump, its just obvious that this book is no piece of literature. When reading on I found that a lot of the dialogue exchanged by the characters is very unrealistic and excruciatingly cringy at times which in a way is true to the books genre (teen romance), but it does make the book much harder to read and inauthentic which did put me off as personally when im reading romance I like to envision myself in that situation as a hopeless romantic but I couldn’t do that with this book as I would never say some of the things the character says in real life, this is the same with a lot of her other books I have read and to me it just feels a bit amateur.
I think the reason the appeal is so strong especially with teenage girls is because not only does Hoover cover themes of romance but she also writes about serious topics intertwined with the romance that are realistic and authentic which adds much more depth to the story there fore making it relatable alongside the fantasy of the romance which I assure you many teenage girls crave and long for. Also Hoover creates characters who are loveable and hate-able which allows her audience to become invested in the characters and their personalities in a similar way people are invested in the characters of their favourite tv show which can be quite comforting for some.
Overall I personally do enjoy Colleen Hoovers books, I think they are great reads to get me out of a reading slump or for when I just want an easy read when im in my romance genre phase and I like how her books all have very similar structures but very different story’s so whereas I wasn’t a massive fan of ‘it ends with us’, I did really enjoy ‘ugly love’, so no two of her story’s are the same. I would recommend her books to those who are a sucker for romance and drama or those who are just looking for an easy but satisfying read.