About the author
Colleen Hoover is an American novelist whose work spans romance, young adult fiction, and psychological suspense. Raised in Texas, she studied social work and worked in social services and teaching before fiction became her full-time career.
Her first novel, Slammed, was self-published in 2012 so that her mother could read it on a new Kindle. Reader recommendations pushed Slammed and its sequel onto bestseller lists, after which Atria Books republished them. Later that year, Hopeless became the first self-published novel to reach number one on The New York Times bestseller list.
That route from direct digital publication to mass-market success is central to Hoover's career. Her books found an especially large second life through online reading communities, but they do not all occupy the same genre: It Ends with Us and Ugly Love are relationship-driven, Verity is a psychological thriller, and Hopeless begins as young adult romance before moving into family trauma.
It Ends with Us is her best-known book. It places romantic attachment beside domestic abuse and the inheritance of family behavior, then asks when sympathy for another person's past must give way to responsibility for what happens next. It Starts with Us returns to the same characters from a later point in Lily Bloom's life.
Where to start
Start with It Ends with Us, then continue to It Starts with Us. Choose Verity if you want suspense rather than romance, or Hopeless if you want to begin with Hoover's early self-published work.
