5 ‘Best’ Colleen Hoover Books That Need To Become Movies Next

Now that “It Ends With Us” is a legitimate box office sensation — the romantic drama managed to snag second place during its opening weekend behind “Deadpool & Wolverine,” somehow — we should all gird our loins and get ready for more Colleen Hoover adaptations. The best-selling novelist, who brought her own difficult life experiences to “It Ends With Us,” has written, to put it bluntly, a lot of books, and Hoover’s fans are nothing if not devoted to her and her work. So, what’s next for the fanbase that calls themselves “the Cohorts?” Probably a string of movies based on Hoover’s soapy, steamy, and highly dramatic stories.

I should be upfront right now: I am not a fan of Hoover’s work. I find the writing to be technically poor, I don’t understand why her character names are so blatantly ridiculous (Ryle? Lowen?! Allysa?!?!), and I think that her attempts at serious messages are misguided at best and damaging at worst. A lot of people like her books, and that’s fine, but the woman has seared so many unsettling images into my brain — from cow sh*t as an aphrodisiac to someone washing and then puking on a raw chicken — that I might be slightly uncharitable here.

With that out of the way, we all have to reckon with our fate, which probably involves a bunch of big-screen takes on Hoover’s books. So, which ones deserve this dubious honor?

Despite the alleged drama between Blake Lively and director Justin Baldoni on the set of “It Ends With Us,” a sequel feels like a done deal at this point, largely because Colleen Hoover already wrote the damn thing. In the sequel, Lily Blossom Bloom, the clumsily named florist turned single parent to Emerson “Emmy” Kincaid, has to figure out a way to co-parent with her physically abusive ex-husband Ryle, all while she starts up a real romance with her childhood love Atlas Corrigan. The book switches perspectives with each chapter, giving both Atlas and Lily their own points of view — “It Ends With Us” notably only featured Lily’s — and deals with the clunky ending of the first novel, which sees Lily sharing custody of her daughter with her former abuser.

Putting aside the fact that Lively and Baldoni, who play Lily and Ryle in “It Ends With Us,” may not return to play these characters, “It Starts With Us” is sort of a plodding story, all things considered. Still, the way audiences turned out for the first movie all but guarantees that a sequel will happen one way or another, so prepare yourself for a movie where Ryle keeps acting like an absolute jerk and Lily and Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) finally make their relationship work.

Probably Colleen Hoover’s second-biggest book after “It Ends With Us,” Verity is more of a thriller than Hoover’s other romantic dramas — which isn’t necessarily mean it works as a thriller. We begin the book following Lowen Ashleigh, an author suffering from writer’s block, who ends up meeting a man named Jeremy Crawford by chance after they both witness a violent accident. Jeremy soon reveals that his wife, the famous novelist Verity Crawford, is immobile after an accident and needs a ghostwriter for her next book, which leads to Lowen moving into the really creepy Crawford home.

It’s relatively easy to guess a lot of the major plot twists in “Verity,” to be frank. Lowen and Jeremy do strike up an inappropriate relationship, and through old diary entries from Verity herself, we learn about her relationship with Jeremy and the tragedy that befell their family years before her car accident. This is also the Hoover book where a character gets life-changing news while washing a chicken — a thing you should not do, actually — and then vomits on the raw chicken, so that should be really fun to watch when this inevitably gets its own film adaptation.

Another romantic drama that bears some basic similarities to “It Ends With Us” — in that it chronicles a deeply troubled and outright dysfunctional relationship — Colleen Hoover’s novel “November 9” seems like a decent contender for an adaptation. The book is structured in a way that, to be quite honest, feels like a rip-off of David Nicholls’ “One Day” (which got adaptations on both the big and small screen). When they’re both just 18 years old, Fallon and Ben meet on the West Coast and spend just one day with each other, but because Fallon is preparing to move to New York, they agree to meet up every year on the same date. (You can probably guess which date.)

The reveal in this book is truly, absolutely outlandish — basically, we find out that Ben is the reason that Fallon’s house burned down, which, okay?! — but the main couple end up together anyway, so all’s well that ends well. Again, this whole plotline of meeting each other once a year to carry on some sort of relationship has been done to death, but “November 9” has Colleen Hoover’s name slapped on it, so we could end up with yet another movie that feels suspiciously similar to “One Day” (although, ideally, this one won’t feature Anne Hathaway sporting a particularly bad British accent).

All of Colleen Hoover’s books could probably be called “Ugly Love” for one reason or another, but she chose this one, which focuses on the troubling romance between nurse Elizabeth “Tate” Collins and pilot Miles Archer. Tate and Miles definitely don’t hit it off right away, but after he cuts his hand and she stitches it up, they kiss, at which point he tells her that she shouldn’t “let” him do that again. This detente lasts for about one evening before Miles tells Tate they can make a deal: they can sleep together whenever they want but will never have a legitimate relationship, and Tate can never ask Miles about anything personal.

For plot reasons, Tate takes this relatively unappealing offer, and Hoover switches perspectives so that we can learn what happened to Miles — which ultimately boils down to a tumultuous young love that ends in the tragic death of Miles’ son. Throughout “Ugly Love,” Miles treats Tate like absolute crap, so it feels like “Ugly Love” might be sort of difficult to translate without making the male lead completely off-putting. Sure, they get a happy ending, but do audiences really want to sit through an entire film’s worth of a traumatized man forcing distance between himself and the main love interest? (Maybe they do. Again, it’s under the Colleen Hoover umbrella. This stuff sells.)

“Reminders of Him” has something with common with “It Starts With Us,” in that both books ostensibly center around single parents (although Lily and Atlas’ romance in the latter book definitely takes center stage over Emmy, who’s more of a plot device than anything else). With that said, “Reminders of Him” takes a different approach in that its main character, Kenna Rowan, has just left prison and is trying to regain custody of her four-year-old daughter Diem — although the whole reason she was in prison is that she was responsible for a car accident that killed Diem’s father Scotty. Naturally, Scotty’s family really hates Kenna, and since they’re the ones with custody of her daughter when she gets out of prison, the whole situation is an uphill battle.

There’s a romance in this book too — with Ledger, Scotty’s former best friend — but it mostly centers around Kenna’s grief and guilt, even after Ledger uncovers information that reveals that Kenna might not be responsible for Scotty’s death after all. “Reminders of Him” feels like a classic romantic tearjerker, so it would make as good of a movie as any of these, probably, but it’s also one of the saddest books she’s ever written, which might make it a tough watch.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.