Beware of romanticised abuse in best-selling writer Colleen Hoover's young-adult books

She has sold more than 20 million books and frequently tops bestsellers list, including The Straits Times' and The New York Times' fiction lists with her titles such as Ugly Love, It Ends With Us and November 9.

- Charmaine Lim

Most notably, It Ends With Us has been on The New York Times' bestseller list for 81 weeks and taken the top spot on The Straits Times' list for 27 weeks.

But romance author Colleen Hoover, 43, has faced controversy for her stories, which critics say romanticises abuse.

The formerly self-published American author has more than 20 books that feature abuse, or toxic men, at the centre of their plot lines. In most stories, such behaviour is overlooked and depicted as romantic or desirable.

In February 2022, Hoover faced further controversy when a Twitter user named @theonottlovebot alleged that Hoover's then 21-year-old son sexually harassed her when she was 16.

While Hoover has not publicly acknowledged these claims, she did deny the allegations in her private Facebook group in November, according to a Distractify report.

Unlike the genre of dark romance, where readers expect all sorts of terrible behaviour, Hoover's books are marketed as romance without trigger warnings for the scenarios they depict.

This is problematic because her books are often read by female audiences and wrongly marketed as young adult novels. Readers in their early teens are reading and posting about her works works on TikTok, likely without their parents' knowledge about the material in these books.