Fun fact: out of the five canonically queer characters in the Hooververse I’m aware of, two are sexual predators, one is the Gay Best Friend from like one scene, one is a child with minimal impact on the plot, and the other is Ellen DeGeneres
CoHo books be like "My name is Cantaloupe McMelon, and my family owns the most successful fruit stand in Butfuc Maine. I've been madly in love with Dyc Tipman, who lives in the dumpster behind the family fruit stand for about a week now. The dumpster had been custom ordered by my father; it was made of Marine-grade polymer, and painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot. My father, Ragyn, was infuriated when he found out, and made me swear to never disgrace the family fruit stand by marrying Dyc, so I... Can't elope. When I told Dyc, he [redacted] me, so I KNOW he loves me. Before long, I found out I was pregnant as a result of the [redacted], and that's all that matters - EVER. So I said "f*ck the family fruit stand!" and moved into the dumpster - which was made of Marine-grade polymer, and was painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot - with Dyc. Then, to everyone's surprise, the dumpster - which was made of Marine-grade polymer, and painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot - was ALSO pregnant! I used her little dumpster babies as cribs for MY little dumpster babies. When my father found out his dumpster - which was made of Marine-grade polymer, and painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot - was pregnant, he had a heart attack! He hadn't had time to write me out of his will, so the family fruit stand is mine now, and we only sell asparagus - it was Dyc's idea - he's so very smart! And we all lived happily ever after; especially the dumpster - which was made of Marine-grade polymer, and painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot - because she was pregnant AGAIN! 🤗" FIN.
What really baffles me is not that her books have gotten this big because let’s be real most people have shitty taste and can barely read, but that she used to be a SOCIAL WORKER like??? Did she tell people yeah I know he’s hitting you isn’t that so romantic 😭😭😭
Nah nah nah, hitting is clearly abusing… but what about yelling at you or throwing things? He is just passionate babes. Or he doesn’t give you access to the bank accounts and you have to show him the receipts for everything you buy when he decides to give you money?? He’s just being strong and responsible. Babes, he just cares SOOO MUCH!!
My father was abused by my mother in all ways but physical. When they divorced she took everything, including his kids. Part of why he just let her take us is because he thought she could provide better and wouldn’t abuse us like he did her. I never told him how bad it was, but she beat me countless times throughout my childhood. My mother is like the Coho love interest in that she has a “monster” in her and just SNAPS. Spreading the lie that an abusive partner would never lay hands on their kids like they did the partner they abused is so fucking dangerous and irresponsible for someone with as much influence as Coho to do. Her reaction to the movie press with cute flowers and hair care products shows that she has very little empathy for her mother, imo
I genuinely hope her mother isn’t alive anymore, and hasn’t been since before It Ends With Us has that fucking AWFUL dedication and daddy-love to the man CoHo admits beat her mom so bad that he had to have knuckles replaced. It would genuinely be better for her other to be gone than for her mother to see such admiration for her abuser. CoHo is fucking sick.
4:08 I already had to pause the video because of the author's note. "Tried his very best not to be his worst" what kind of bullshit is that? Not being horrible and abusive is the absolute minimum for a husband and father. "And for my mother, who made sure we never saw him at his worst" ah yes, now we're also glorifying abusive situations as some kind of martyrdom where the woman has to be the bigger person and clean up the mess of an abusive man. SHE has to make sure nobody else sees it and is affected, HE just "has to try his best"🥺🥺🥺 I don't care if this is supposed to be deep or cynical or whatever, I don't care if this is supposed to be some kind of backhanded statement or indirect jab, I (as a female victim of male violence) found this author's note horrible and insulting to read.
I caught that too... Like, he obviously didn't fucking try hard enough now, did he?? Breaking his knuckles on his wife's face!! Are you kidding me, what did he "try"??? PFFFF I can't believe she just kept writing about her father like "my best friend", how fucked up is that. Anyone who raises a hand on my mother is ??? straight to jail, kicked, dragged, shamed, and not to ever ever EVER come even near us again. What the fuck. It is incredibly insulting and I'm sorry about what happened to you 🫂
That bit in the author’s note (or was it dedication?) literally raised my blood pressure. Colleen, your father beat your mother. That’s not “trying his best”, it’s the fucking opposite. At this point, I have no sympathy for this woman. It’s clear she has some unresolved trauma from her childhood she deals with in the most misogynistic, abuse excusing way possible, but I don’t care. Her psychological issues are hurting people by way of her choosing to romanticise and minimise domestic abuse to her audience of millions. Fuck you, Colleen Hoover. Fuck you.
@@Nemamka Yeah when I got to the part with the knuckles I was just...💀 You can imagine. That is so far away from even "trying" that it blew my mind. And thank you💜 I'm fine and safe now but I think I have to be a full on CoHo hater from now on because this author's note just... yeah. Nope.
absolute minimum for a husband and father? try total baseline human behaviour. constantly hurting others on purpose is antisocial and should never be tolerated among peers let alone uwufied into slop for mass consumption like this. sometimes it feels like hoover is a psyop to make women lower their standards and expectations for what they expect from a man, because what the fuck is this.
honestly i'm starting to think coho believes that "his worst" would have been actually dealing fatal harm to her mother, because it just baffles me how much she excuses him. alizee reading off the dedications from coho to her parents genuinely pissed me off. she's allowed to think and feel whatever the hell she wants about her relationship with her dad, but when book after book included toxic male love interests... maybe coho needs to see a therapist about the way she idolizes her father and men like him and how that seeps into her writing through the repeat justification of shitty behaviors that most people (especially the people old enough to see through that bullshit) view as red flags.
also imagine hearing that the person in charge of your case became a writer and her works are sold everywhere only to find out it glamorizes the abuse you went through
@@arienbates2996 because men who (most probably are abusers) who are big wigs are making money off her books and all the mistreated women and girls who buy her books. The author is not cancelled because she's filling some man's coffers and pockets.
This is random but it irked me, compost is not cow manure. Compost is made from old plant material, like veggies! Or leaves, stuff like that. Manure is manure. Made from animal droppings. They are two separate things
@@NemamkaTell me about it. I tend to obsess about using the right linguistic register for each character and situation, and then this woman writes everything as a 12 year old and becomes a millionaire 😂
I can buy Lilly as someone emotionally stunted by the trauma of growing up powerless in an abusive home now trying to “adult” in her early 20s and attempting to ignore her past (especially with her mother insisting they keep it a secret) but CoHo never digs into that! I wish all the sex scenes were replaced with therapy sessions!
I wouldn't hate this book if, instead of being about a woman realizing a man is abusive because a different man did the absolute bare minimum of not hitting her, if she realized that Atlas isn't much better and then went to therapy to unpack why she can only be aroused by abusive men.
As someone whose father abused my mother, I hated this book but especially the acknowledgements at the end. If one of my siblings wrote a book like this where the text goes out of its way to forgive and empathize with the abuser who tormented someone I love, I would be fuming. If they wrote those acknowledgements? No contact. It would be absolutely despicable.
the thing that really gets me about this book is I was colleen hoover. like we experienced the same/similar childhoods. And still, she writes about it with no grace or nuance despite having literally lived through it. I think a competent writer would have been able to write something interesting about internalizing your parents abusive relationship and turning it into an interesting piece of fiction but this is just bad. I think it's also just weird that she continues to excuse her 'fathers' character's behavior in her other work.
Seriously. I wrote things I have experienced in my stories. Even went to do some things for research to have that first hand experience, and I feel what I wrote about them is vivid and true, and I don't even consider myself very self aware. And here she wrote a book about something that happened in her life and made it so paper thin? Rachel oates did the video about the sequel to this book and referenced how much better dv is written in children books by Jacqueline Wilson. Smh.
obviously I don't know her, but based on her books I think she never really unpacked what happened to her in a serious way... in the authorʼs note it's also clear that she considers her fatherʼs abuse of her mother as something external to him (if this makes sense), rather than him just being an abusive man
it’s screaming victim who hasn’t come to terms with what happened to them. i knew a girl once who was SA’d and she liked to write stories. And I just remember she sent me this one “romance” about a teacher and a student (high school) that she wrote and I was like 💀girl idk how to tell you this, but that’s not romantic, that’s abusive and predatory. and we had a long conversation about it. colleen hoover’s novels read like she never had someone around to tell her she was unconsciously (god i hope its unconscious bc otherwise she has no excuse) perpetuating her own trauma in her books.
@@SilentProti that Lola Rose dv scene Rachel read out was so impactful I remember reading it as a kid and really feeling for the characters Even the dad, to an extent Jacqueline has so much compassion and sensitivity in her writing, yet it’s still grounded
It’s honestly kinda funny that, when you have no knowledge of CoHo, this book is a pretty middling and not very well written exploration of abuse, but when you actually know anything about her other books it’s all that and also outrageously hypocritical Like in her mind abuse is fine unless they physically put their hands on you. And even then it’s probably fine if you’re labelled a bitch
As someone who grew up being abused in every way, and had one abusive relationship as a teen before I met my partner for 26 years before Glioblastoma took him... I really don't like this book, or any other book this woman writes. The fact that other people love these books is appalling. Alizee is right. This is a book about toxic and abusive relationships. Full stop.
The thing that gets me about the flower shop is a flower shop specifically to cater to a goth/alternative aesthetic isn’t a terrible idea. It’s a niche market, but in a big city like Boston you may actually be better off trying to corner a specific niche than to compete with every other generic florist in the city. But somehow that idea morphs into “flower shop for people who hate flowers” which is both stupid on the face of it and implies a lack of understanding of the culture/aesthetic she wants to market to.
I agree! A goth flower shop sounds awesome. Instead of saying it’s for “people who hate flowers” they could say it’s for “people who find beauty in darkness” or something like that
You mean you DON’T go out of your way to go buy the shit you hate?! /s I agree that a goth flower shop is interesting, and also that the idea of “for the people who hate what we sell is so fucking stupid.
I’m kind of revolted to realize only now that per Colleen’s view, what “ends with them” is not actually the pattern of abuse itself, but the bad relationship of children with their fathers. What?? Because leaving for your own sake doesn’t matter, does it? It’s all so your child can have an untarnished view of their shithead dad. Lmao this makes me so angry.
TW: physical abuse I'm not exactly sure how to write this down but I wish to share my own thoughts as someone whose father physically abused their mother. Before I go into it, I would like to state that my mum left my father when I was around 3 years old, so everything I have heard of this situation is just from the people involved (mainly my mum) or who knew about it and, while it has definitely left its mark on me, I have absolutely no memories of any of it. The reason that finally made my mother decide to leave was apparently when I begged my father, as a toddler, to "stop hurting mum" after he had once again beat her. They were never married so the seperation process was fairly simple but I was told by my mum that there were a couple of times my father would come and beg for her to come back to him but she managed to not give in to his empty promises. My mum had full custody of me. The thing is, however, after a couple of years my mum started allowing my father to have me over at his place and I would spend every other Christmas at my father's. For our yearly summer visits I was accompanied by my mother but for those Christmas visits, I was alone at my father's place. My mum did this because she "wanted me to have a father figure in my life". I do not agree with her decision, I believe it was very risky and stupid of her to let her own child be alone with a man who beat her. It is true that my father never physically hurt me as far as I can remember, but that does not change my mind in thinking that my mum's decision wasn't a good one when it came to my relationship with my father. I do not believe a person capable of any kind of abuse should be allowed around children. Regardless of if one thinks they wouldn't hurt a child because they hadn't done so before, that can change at any time. Even the smallest mistake could lead to terrible concequences and it would be because a parent was willing to let their abusive (ex-)partner be around their child. I was lucky my father never physically abused me but there was never a quarantee he wouldn't and at any moment there could have been a moment where he hurt me. There are many reasons for why aside from just the above but I do not like my father. I despise him for all he has done and as such I cannot even comprehend Colleen Hoover's "but he was a good father" mindset. It honestly makes my blood boil with frustration. And this whole book feels insensitive and ignorant, despite the fact that whe was quite literally "writing what she knows". Not to even get into how they are handling the promo for the movie. I'm not really sure how to end this other than saying I wish I could shoot Colleen Hoover off into space so she can never write again. Anyway, thanks to anyone who read this whole ramble, that was very wholesome of you. Cheers!
My biggest problem with this is how the book and film were advertised as romance when it gets flipped on its head midway through. Neither of them even provide resources for the survivors of DV they claim to care for and want to help....
Yeah he really did... I feel so frustrated on his behalf fr. He seemed to actually really care and tried so hard to convey the story in the best way AND provide resources for survivors
@@groovycoconut97 the ads are wild! I’ve gotten a few different ads and, if it wasn’t for the drama coverage, I would have thought the movie was your standard romance / rom-com 😬
I got the impression that CoHo wanted to advertise it as a romance to preserve the "twist" and shock the reader, making them share the MC's experience of falling in love and then be taken aback and confused when things take a turn. Which in a way I can understand, it's definitely a different experience going into it knowing it will be an abusive relationship - though she didn't even successfully execute that, since Ryle wasn't likeable from the beginning. Her incompetence as a writer combined with her wanting to advertise it as a romance made the abuse points kinda get lost.
Thought of you today Alizee. One of my old middle school teachers was gushing on Facebook to her boomer friends about how the movie was sooooo good, bUt NoT aS gOoD aS ThE bOoK™, and now I think I understand why we never saw eye to eye on the teen dystopian romances she forced me to read back then..
@@CatChaos369Just the absolute bottom of the barrel Hunger Games clones you can think of. I remember her being super big mad that I DNF'ed one called Delirium where the concept was basically "Like, what if the government took away love?" with the requisite love triangle plot of course. And I remember she really liked Divergent too.
i almost feel bad for CoHo. you can tell she lacks the emotional tools to process the fact that her father was a terrible person who she still somehow loved, and she romantizes his memory to deal with the complicated pain of losing him. it's kind of heartbreaking. but pushing an apologetic narrative in regards to abusive men and profiting off of it is unforgivable
9:40 - I’m already laughing. He “smells like money” - money smells disgusting ?? Have you ever caught a whiff of some loose change ?? 🤢 Mmm love a man that reeks like a handful of dirty pennies
Hoover is not *just* overrated, but downright a terrible writer by any measure. I have read excerpts of her work, downright indigestible... A testament to the sad fact, that average readers do not care about quality. All they want is smutty schlock, featuring self inserts and male leads straight out of a Hallmark mold.
Listennnn, smut and schlock are two of the greatest pleasures life has to offer BUT. IT CAN BE DONE WELL. And it SHOULD be well-written, well-planned, well-meaning, it should just be......well. And CoHo's writing is _not well._ It's very unwell, it's almost insultingly bad, childish & outdated, and u can tell that the author has NO RESPECT for her readers or their intelligence. I could forgive amateurish stuff like this if it was written by a literal teenager or if it was just on the Internet for free, but CoHo gets PAID for this garbage!! It's ridiculous!! How many better writers are out there, who will never get the chance to share their work with the world just bc they don't have the same advantages as CoHo? How many great stories are being eclipsed by this shallow, prepackaged crap?? CoHo is to literature what "fast fashion" is to the ancient art of weaving: it's cheap, it's tacky, and it's bad for the environment, and I reserve the right to be grumpy about it bc I am now old 😤 We can have books that are fun AND well-written at the same time!!! I promise u that books like this exist!! They're just.....not written by CoHo 😅
@@bbo7002Oh, there is definitely a place for indulgent and smutty books. I was not discounting that branch of writing. But as you said, Colleen Hoover does not make for a good representative.
@@RyubearSaysGao oh my bad, I hope I didn't seem too aggressive?? Ur comment definitely doesn't come off negatively, I was just taking a silly approach to my reply bc......I'm silly 😅 Yes, we are indeed in agreement! Sorry for any confusion lol 😅
This book feels like a personal attack to me. As a ginger who wants to be a florist and also likes the Bruins, the only thing making this worse is young me wanting to be called Lilli. Now my name's Riley which also does not help.
I don't know if this is better, but I always think of the bad ass dog from Call of Duty Ghosts, who is named Riley. A missile in fuzzy form, nothing could stop Riley from getting to their target.
This is absolutely disturbing. There is no way anyone can rationalize an abusive person being involved in their childrens lives despite the fact they beat their partner. Thats absolutely disgusting and lacking any sort of empathy for the victim.
It makes it even more disturbing when you think about the fact that she was a social worker. How many women did she dismiss, and how many abusive men did she support in getting access to their children?
@Jo-ih4yy I'm so worried for those families. Knowing she potentially saw a woman in distress and completely disregarded her safety. It's completely heartwrenching, especially knowing how many people agree with allowing an abuser to not face the consequences of their actions because they don't see women as people.
i truly believe that one of the biggest issues of this book is the ending. no, staying together for the "child's benefit" is not the answer, especially in situations like this. it creates a dangerous and toxic environment for the child to grow up in, and it can be harmful for the child, and especially harmful for the victim. another issue is the advertising of the book. there is no reason under any circumstance that this book should be advertised as a romance novel, same thing goes for the movie. (hope this makes sense). if the novel was so concerned about exploring DV and how it is portrayed, they could've added resources, help lines, and they could've given a portion of the money earned to charities and non-profit organizations that aid individuals that have been in abusive relationships or have experience domestic violence.
It honestly baffled me that she wrote that. It's already crazy enough that people believe that couples that don't like each other should still stay together for their children but to add abuse on top of that and STILL THINK they should stay together?? Collen hoover is trying to get more families murdered by abusive men.
And the fact the Mc doesn't hold the abuser responisble and not because she doesn't have enough evidence or etc. But because she doesn't want a nt to hurt his career and thinks ysing their daughter as an example to make him understand abusing her was wrong. Like he never understood it before.
It's like 50 shades all over again. EL James also made a fuckton of money writing about a subject - bdsm - she knew NOTHING about and misrepresented it to the moon and back. This kind of bullshit has to be its own genre one day I swear.
This book is so badly written. When Lily gets hit by Ryle, she’s shocked because she’s “never felt anything like that before” (along those lines) when previously she’d described watching her mother being abused and her dad eventually hitting her. What do you mean you’ve never felt being hit before ??
she could have been journaling out the trauma of living with her abusive father and watching her mother being abuse but no she only wants to journal when she mets atlas 🙄
her letters to Ellen also sound exactly the same as her present day narration, which likewise begins at the moment she meets a ~hot guy~. her character hasn't changed since age 15 smh 😔
@@user-zq6sz2cr6gtbh I've seen a tweet where a lot of girls said they were writing life stories in dms to celebrities. But at least not in English, so probably Harry styles wouldn't bother to read about some high school drama
The thing about "simplistic" writing is that it actually takes a LOT of skill to write both simply and effectively. To use your example, Stephen King is easy to read, but his writing is also evocative and precise. He conveys strong images and ideas with "simple" word choices, so his works feel a lot richer than they maybe seem at first glance. CoHo (from all I've seen) is less "deep lake" and more "wide puddle". Her writing is simple but lacks the skill it would take to make that work in her favour.
I deeply despise Colleen Hoover, and even more so for exploiting her mother's trauma in this way. Not for one second I believe that this is a deeply personal novel to her and a labour of love. Not with her writing every single one of her male leads who we're supposed to root for in the way she does. It's despicable. Also: I lost respect for Blake Lively for not only partaking in this dumpster fire but for her conduct after the fact.
Thank you for talking about this book, I've heard people mention it as a POSITIVE portrait of abuse and the consequences, and the abuse yes but the consequences...? No, hell no, its a gruelling g process for an abuser to change and not just something that happens because you love them or because they love their kid. Stop. Interestingly though, I think maybe now we can understand a bit why Colleen wouldn't recognise a healthy, loving relationship and appropriate, respectful love from a man even if it did the conga naked before her.
I recently scrolled past someone else’s video because I was like “no I’ve watched too many videos about this same book” but then when I saw yours I didn’t even hesitate to click
Blake is not… a great person? She’s said and done some shitty things outside this whole thing. But I think her reaction and promotion and such is perfectly in line with what CoHo wanted you to walk away with. She’s promoting it the way a lot of women would. You’re supposed to think it’s a cute romcom. You’re supposed to root for Ryle. She’s walked away from this with the full intent the book did. Coho “fell in love with Ryle” and that made her intent not come through. Because Ryle is not a bad person in her view. He’s just damaged and needs the right woman. The director I think had such a wake up call on realising CoHo had no interest in writing about abuse with the way she’s promoting the movie.
@@nostradamus1162 I think he saw the potential for this to be a good story, and he’s not wrong about that. Bad books can make good movies with the right changes, which he apparently wanted to do. The version that’s out is the one Blake did, and since she kisses CoHo’s ass, guess which one CoHo went with despite it rating lower with test audiences. Unfortunately, the women involved are shit people, and his right idea about wanting the voices of women ended up being the wrong women.
people who don't like flowers don't buy flowers. i mean i would have done something contrary in a school assignment, but not as a real business plan. only if i knew the shop was in like a cottage goth neighborhood
On the topic of shitty MMC from CoHo, let's not forget Ben forcing himself on Fallon at the beginning of November 9. He doesn't 🍇 her but he takes off her dress and forces kisses on her and feels her scars that she's ashamed of. Then bullies her into a dress she doesn't want to wear because it shows off her scars.
I would have liked this book in middle school in the worst way. She writes like I did when I thought I was an edgy teen and had no understanding of adult relationships... 😅
Aww, don’t feel too bad about (perceived or actual) cringey things you’d have liked as a teenager. I mean, that’s the whole point of growing up. It’s when you’re like 35+ years old and still trying to justify the existence of COHO’s books that we start to worry for humanity. And that’s why adults are supposed to be looking out for and protecting kids (this includes teenagers) - bc kids really don’t know too much about some important things, and their decision making abilities can be really shit.
@@Samantha2209 I don't mind the existence of the books as such... It's their level of success and the way their fans defend them blindly that chills the blood in my veins.
And THAT is the scariest thing. Lots of teenagers like these books and they can get them off the shelves pretty easily because they are marketed as YA romance with pretty pastel covers! I mean holy shit, at least with Twilight you were expecting some darker themes simply because you knew that the vampirism element has had some... BAGGAGE throughout the history of literature, and anywhere it reappeared it gained more. You don't even need much media literacy to understand what vampire + fair maiden means, AND to understand what age group should be reading such dark fantasy romance. But this...? This is truly unpredictable and I am baffled that CoHo books are not all marked as 18+.
35:09 Did Colleen Hoover really write that Ryle was about a foot away from Lily just after he’d been petting her ankle? That’s a terrible joke and I don’t think she even made it on purpose.
Something just occurred to me. WHY would it be "cliche" to keep a diary? Most people don't keep diaries. Especially teenagers and children have a lot of trouble maintaining an effortful habit like that. But it's also not weird. It's a normal thing someone could do. It's like saying that going to therapy for your mental health is cliche, or taking ballet lessons as a kid is cliche. It's just something people do. Maybe you could say it was typical or stereotypical for the type or demographic of person you might be. But trite and cliche? So what does CoHo mean by that? I have no problem with a diary addressed to someone. I feel like that's normal also. I think it's cliche because Lily is a book protagonist and it's a trope. Lily is aware that she's a protagonist, so she says it's cliche. Or rather, CoHo cannot sufficiently inhabit her characters as fully formed individuals separate from her relationship to them as a writer long enough to write even their internal monologues entirely from their own point of view. The characters are painfully self referential to the medium they exist in. Like Marvel movies making quips from the POV of their own genre savvy, only not actually even funny or clever as a quip, or even insightful about the medium itself (see: all the discussions of books in November 9). I've thought this before in how her protags refer to themselves, like they are aware of their own types and don't even consider themselves as individuals (in between bouts of "not like other girls" -isms). It's like actions and scenes can't be described without the protags wondering whether they are in character for them.
Seeing Coho making all these books and now a movie, somehow she can still roll in the dough. I respect the hustle, but as someone who writes fics for free its like the clockwork orange torture scene Edit: 1:03:10 idk why that description of Ryle i just think of that sf6 video of Luke saying "dude, you look huge!"
I’ve heard more than 0 people say Kincaid like “Kinsade” and I forgive it bc at least I can imagine that one Thomas rolling in his kitsch grave. Unintentional (kin)shade that they don’t even know his kin’s name.
This intro always makes me think of the poem about suicide in BoJack Horseman - The View from Halfway Down. Don’t mess with shit you’re ill equipped to discuss, CoHo. (Also you were a social worker?!? Do so much better!!!)
I think it’s weird that CoHo wrote not only an awful representation of DV, but also spicy scenes involving a man she admitted to modeling after her father and what feels like a self insert mixed with her mom???
if I was on a roof with ryle and his response to hearing about my abuser was "there's no bad people, only people who do bad things sometimes" I would've pushed him right over the edge
Amen to this. I think I was too young to understand just how problematic the MMCs in CoHo's books are, but I know I loved them to pieces. So much so that, after reading Slammed (which was my first CoHo experience) I bought all the other books that were available IN ONE GO. The bag was too heavy for me to carry. 😂 But on another note... is it just me or are all the FMCs just trying really hard to be quirky and not like other girls? Edit: I read the book in German and the fake-cry thing in chapter 2 was changed to 'scream' which takes away a lot of the weirdness in that scene. 😂
@@SilentProti Tbh, that sounds like overstepping. Translating is a harder job than most people imagine, and at some points you have to make decisions. But you shouldn't change the structure of a text, or deliberately alter the author's choices, tempting as it might be. You're translating somebody else's finished work, not judging and marking a school essay.
It kinda makes me laugh (but honestly in a very sad way) that occasionally you'll think 'oh gosh, is Colleen being clever here?' and it's just...the answer is never actually yes. It's never a clever analogy or allegory, or a fun Easter egg or meme thing, they're just weirdly random blips or unoriginal thoughts cut out from cleverer media or worse, three seconds later she'll punt you over the head with what it actually is (repeatedly if she can) because she's just as dense as she expects her readers to be. I will acknowledge that she has a unique skill for naming character, though I will add, this is a curse, not a gift. They're always the stupidest names imaginable. It's like she picks random objects and shuffles a few letters around.
people are confused about why the marketing around the movie has been such a disaster and there’s a simple answer-the source material is garbage. coho is a hack and her attempt at writing about more serious topics does not legitimize her as a serious author. her perspective on DV is problematic at best and deeply harmful at worst-of course the movie and the majority of people involved in it are not going to be capable of providing an intelligent and empathetic exploration of the topic
1:05:00 is such a queen behavior. istfg, one day the asylum is gonna claim me, having gone insane from all of the babying and mental gymnastics everybody on the internet feels obligated to do, because god forbid somebody on the internet gets offended. we need more channels like yours, Alizee. never change.
Thrilled to see another video but I have to address the most important detail: THAT’S how Maude died???? I watched the Simpsons on and off as a kid and vaguely remember her dying but death by t-shirt cannon is bonkers and I love it.
2:06:20 I have two daughters and never have I ever „dreamed of“ THEIR wedding or thought of them as incubators to mY gRAndBaBiEs 💀💀 my oldest (7) has expressed multiple times that she doesn’t want to have children, ever and I don’t CAAAARE JAHHAHHAHA I just want them to do what makes them happy. I’m gobsmacked at this type of parent 😬😬😬
@@drownzi it’s normal to like the idea of having grandbabies. It’s not normal to obsess over your children’s love lives and reproductive organs by constantly pressuring them and dreaming about them having children. Pregnancy is extremely hard on the Body and raising children requires strong mental health and the willingness to give up on most of your needs, boundaries and all of your privacy. It is the mosh difficult thing I, personally, ever had to do, because it takes such a toll on your mind AND body. I don’t want my children to do anything, that they aren’t ready to do yet. And I will be just as happy, if both of them stay child free. Their lives aren’t about what I want. It’s about what they want out of it.
I think the ending bothers me so much because so often women don't have a choice to keep abusive men out of their and their children's lives because the court orders them to have visitation/shared custody because of the perpetuation of ideas like "oh well he never hit the kids". This also traps women who are afraid to leave because at least if she's there she might be able to protect the kids but if she leaves he'll have unsupervised visitation or shared custody time with them. And abusive parents (particularly men) have been known to kidnap or kill their children to "punish" the ex partner. And Colleen should be familiar with all that as a social worker! And yet she's writing this where Lily prioritizes her daughter having time with her abusive father and worrying about their relationship instead of her safety.
it's astounding how bad coho is at writing healthy relationships. I'm convinced if you cut out the endings to all her books and/or had someone read a chapter of each and say which book is the one where the love interest is made to be abusive it'd be really hard to tell. The only difference between this one and others is that there's more overt physical abuse. My money is on Nov 9th for being one of the top guessing for the book specifically written about abuse because god is that a messed up book.
I think you missed an important reason people do have or adopt kids: they've always liked kids and wanted to be a parent. I don't really think there is a purely selfless choice in having or not having kids, but some people at least like kids, endeavor to care for them well, and respect them as independent people without expecting anything in return. Otherwise we are animals. Most of us have a biological imperative to reproduce. Though the more stressed we are the less that imperative influences us.
I was sat in the cinema about to watch the film and I hear a girl talking to her friend, saying she'd forgive Ryle and take him back. Then i started getting reels on mt algorithm about "reasons to love Ryle." It's really not good.
Oh goody, I've already watched Rachel Oates video on this but I'll watch you review it too cuz I'm interested in your take and of course, the humour in which you present sensitive subjects to make them more digestible.
A lot of my friends love this book and the film. The book is under romance, so maybe that's why it's marketed so romance? I have come to the conclusion that some people just like to read mindlessly, so they don't mind if something is written poorly or promotes toxic behavior and relationships. They're content with surface level thoughts.
I used to be pissed off at Colleen, but now, in the words of John Coffey, “I’m tired, boss.” She, Anna Todd, Penelope Douglas, and so many others write all these toxic characters, then try to justify their toxicity to make us care about them. That alone would make me upset, but then Colleen has the nerve to deliberately write an abusive character and call his abuse out. That wouldn’t be a problem if-as you said-all of her toxic characters didn't act just like Ryle. It just makes me think, “Oh. So you knew what we were thinking all along and you only now show the abuse to be just that.” It doesn't feel good, it feels like she’s mocking us, like she could have written all of these horrible characters as horrible people instead of portraying them as sympathetic. Trauma is one thing, trauma as an excuse is another. I’m basically rehashing what you said, Alizee, but the point is, all I can do is give an exasperated sigh by now. On an unrelated note, she wouldn't approve of abortion even if one of her characters was implanted with a goddamn Xenomorph.
Coho gotta be extra traumatized from what her dad did to her mom when in her, in my opinion, "best book" cuz the man is at least called out for being an abusive dingus, she tries so hard, through Lily, to paint Ryle as just being "broken" and Lily should "reconsider" leaving him entirely and not allow him to visit his kid unsupervised.. She even has lily call herself "like her father" bc she told off her abuser
As a person who has been in an abusive relationship, I did feel like I was the abuser often, because he was so broken and sad and I was just doing everything wrong. It was the grooming talking, and that's also how I took it when I read it at least.
This has so little to do with anything, but how in the hell do you make a vase out of velvet? Like, you cover a glass or plastic vase with fabric? That’s gonna be so hard to clean!
The fact that this book won awards for romance gives me so much relief because i feel like a few choice examples of classic literature also got a lot of notoriety for the wrong reasons and everyone just forgot about that.
15:37 I agree with this sentiment, actually. As a mental health worker, I have to. But there's something to be said about people who do bad things and do nothing to change that.
13:34 quick disagree with that statement; it can be so out of the question for many of us to say we hate/don't love a deeply flawed parent or relative, particularly when traditional family values have been so deeply embedded in our family culture
Yes, it's very difficult to do in many situations, but it's *possible* and a lot of people do it. She didn't tell people who to love, she just said people shouldn't assume it's a given.
apologizing for giving coho to much credit the first time around is absolutely wild and iconic
Fun fact: out of the five canonically queer characters in the Hooververse I’m aware of, two are sexual predators, one is the Gay Best Friend from like one scene, one is a child with minimal impact on the plot, and the other is Ellen DeGeneres
not ellen 💀💀💀
🤣🤣🤣
Don't forget about Ben being stereotyped 🤣🤣
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Ouff, she really went for representation in the WORST WAY POSSIBLE
CoHo books be like
"My name is Cantaloupe McMelon, and my family owns the most successful fruit stand in Butfuc Maine.
I've been madly in love with Dyc Tipman, who lives in the dumpster behind the family fruit stand for about a week now. The dumpster had been custom ordered by my father; it was made of Marine-grade polymer, and painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot.
My father, Ragyn, was infuriated when he found out, and made me swear to never disgrace the family fruit stand by marrying Dyc, so I... Can't elope.
When I told Dyc, he [redacted] me, so I KNOW he loves me.
Before long, I found out I was pregnant as a result of the [redacted], and that's all that matters - EVER. So I said "f*ck the family fruit stand!" and moved into the dumpster - which was made of Marine-grade polymer, and was painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot - with Dyc.
Then, to everyone's surprise, the dumpster - which was made of Marine-grade polymer, and painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot - was ALSO pregnant! I used her little dumpster babies as cribs for MY little dumpster babies.
When my father found out his dumpster - which was made of Marine-grade polymer, and painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot - was pregnant, he had a heart attack!
He hadn't had time to write me out of his will, so the family fruit stand is mine now, and we only sell asparagus - it was Dyc's idea - he's so very smart!
And we all lived happily ever after; especially the dumpster - which was made of Marine-grade polymer, and painted purple - the color of Grimace, my father's favorite McDonald's mascot - because she was pregnant AGAIN! 🤗"
FIN.
This is epic, not going to lie.
This is an incredibly accurate to how she names her characters.
Oml this is the best story I've ever read?!
Madly epic ngl
The “Marine grade polymer” knocked me out 😭😭😭 too accurate
More interesting than any coho book has ever sounded to me
Anyone else find it weird that she based them off her parents and then "fell in love with" the character that represents her abusive father?
She's gotta be extra traumatized.. all jokes aside Coho is geniunely a messed up and bad person
Oh god I didn’t even clock that, but now that you point it out… 😬
_>I've grown as a person. Im far more cynical and pedantic._
And we love to see it.
What really baffles me is not that her books have gotten this big because let’s be real most people have shitty taste and can barely read, but that she used to be a SOCIAL WORKER like??? Did she tell people yeah I know he’s hitting you isn’t that so romantic 😭😭😭
Betterhelp ahh therapist
Nah nah nah, hitting is clearly abusing… but what about yelling at you or throwing things? He is just passionate babes. Or he doesn’t give you access to the bank accounts and you have to show him the receipts for everything you buy when he decides to give you money?? He’s just being strong and responsible. Babes, he just cares SOOO MUCH!!
She was a social worker🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
As a social worker myself, these 'social workers' are the reason our profession isn't taken seriously by too many people. It makes me mad
@@justkittensbeingkittens5892
For all their controversy, I’d rather have a BetterHelp therapist than have CoHo as a social worker.
My father was abused by my mother in all ways but physical. When they divorced she took everything, including his kids. Part of why he just let her take us is because he thought she could provide better and wouldn’t abuse us like he did her. I never told him how bad it was, but she beat me countless times throughout my childhood. My mother is like the Coho love interest in that she has a “monster” in her and just SNAPS.
Spreading the lie that an abusive partner would never lay hands on their kids like they did the partner they abused is so fucking dangerous and irresponsible for someone with as much influence as Coho to do. Her reaction to the movie press with cute flowers and hair care products shows that she has very little empathy for her mother, imo
I’m so sorry that happened to you
I genuinely hope her mother isn’t alive anymore, and hasn’t been since before It Ends With Us has that fucking AWFUL dedication and daddy-love to the man CoHo admits beat her mom so bad that he had to have knuckles replaced. It would genuinely be better for her other to be gone than for her mother to see such admiration for her abuser. CoHo is fucking sick.
4:08 I already had to pause the video because of the author's note. "Tried his very best not to be his worst" what kind of bullshit is that? Not being horrible and abusive is the absolute minimum for a husband and father. "And for my mother, who made sure we never saw him at his worst" ah yes, now we're also glorifying abusive situations as some kind of martyrdom where the woman has to be the bigger person and clean up the mess of an abusive man. SHE has to make sure nobody else sees it and is affected, HE just "has to try his best"🥺🥺🥺
I don't care if this is supposed to be deep or cynical or whatever, I don't care if this is supposed to be some kind of backhanded statement or indirect jab, I (as a female victim of male violence) found this author's note horrible and insulting to read.
I caught that too... Like, he obviously didn't fucking try hard enough now, did he?? Breaking his knuckles on his wife's face!! Are you kidding me, what did he "try"??? PFFFF
I can't believe she just kept writing about her father like "my best friend", how fucked up is that. Anyone who raises a hand on my mother is ??? straight to jail, kicked, dragged, shamed, and not to ever ever EVER come even near us again. What the fuck.
It is incredibly insulting and I'm sorry about what happened to you 🫂
That bit in the author’s note (or was it dedication?) literally raised my blood pressure.
Colleen, your father beat your mother. That’s not “trying his best”, it’s the fucking opposite. At this point, I have no sympathy for this woman. It’s clear she has some unresolved trauma from her childhood she deals with in the most misogynistic, abuse excusing way possible, but I don’t care. Her psychological issues are hurting people by way of her choosing to romanticise and minimise domestic abuse to her audience of millions. Fuck you, Colleen Hoover. Fuck you.
@@Nemamka Yeah when I got to the part with the knuckles I was just...💀
You can imagine. That is so far away from even "trying" that it blew my mind.
And thank you💜 I'm fine and safe now but I think I have to be a full on CoHo hater from now on because this author's note just... yeah. Nope.
absolute minimum for a husband and father? try total baseline human behaviour. constantly hurting others on purpose is antisocial and should never be tolerated among peers let alone uwufied into slop for mass consumption like this. sometimes it feels like hoover is a psyop to make women lower their standards and expectations for what they expect from a man, because what the fuck is this.
honestly i'm starting to think coho believes that "his worst" would have been actually dealing fatal harm to her mother, because it just baffles me how much she excuses him. alizee reading off the dedications from coho to her parents genuinely pissed me off. she's allowed to think and feel whatever the hell she wants about her relationship with her dad, but when book after book included toxic male love interests... maybe coho needs to see a therapist about the way she idolizes her father and men like him and how that seeps into her writing through the repeat justification of shitty behaviors that most people (especially the people old enough to see through that bullshit) view as red flags.
also imagine hearing that the person in charge of your case became a writer and her works are sold everywhere only to find out it glamorizes the abuse you went through
Exactly! How is she not canceled?! Nothing she writes has a trauma informed meta text!
@@arienbates2996 because men who (most probably are abusers) who are big wigs are making money off her books and all the mistreated women and girls who buy her books. The author is not cancelled because she's filling some man's coffers and pockets.
Omg why are people buying these books? This is such an ignominy to people who’ve been through DV
This is random but it irked me, compost is not cow manure. Compost is made from old plant material, like veggies! Or leaves, stuff like that. Manure is manure. Made from animal droppings. They are two separate things
And it's a book about a vocational gardener whose dream is to open a flower shop!
It's not only ignorance. It's refusal to do research.
@@user-zq6sz2cr6g And to think I spend hours and hours of research just to get HALF a sentence in my fanfictions objectively factually correct. God.
@@NemamkaTell me about it. I tend to obsess about using the right linguistic register for each character and situation, and then this woman writes everything as a 12 year old and becomes a millionaire 😂
I'm not even into gardening and I know that
EXACTLY. i don't know much about gardening, but I'm just really interested in decaying organic matter because my favorite bugs are detritivores
I have this feeling that Lily is supposed to feel deep and smart throughout the book, but she sounds like teenager that thinks they know it all
I'm assuming all CoHo's protagonists are written this way.
@@AeliaReadsBooks low key they mostly give the feeling of "you can't write someone smarter than yourself" with a shower of internalised mysoginy.
I can buy Lilly as someone emotionally stunted by the trauma of growing up powerless in an abusive home now trying to “adult” in her early 20s and attempting to ignore her past (especially with her mother insisting they keep it a secret) but CoHo never digs into that! I wish all the sex scenes were replaced with therapy sessions!
@@nooneofnote8453 "I wish all the sex scenes were replaced with therapy sessions", I think that about all of her books tbh
@@nooneofnote8453
Tsk, knowing her, the therapy sessions would turn into sex scenes by the second or third.
I wouldn't hate this book if, instead of being about a woman realizing a man is abusive because a different man did the absolute bare minimum of not hitting her, if she realized that Atlas isn't much better and then went to therapy to unpack why she can only be aroused by abusive men.
As someone whose father abused my mother, I hated this book but especially the acknowledgements at the end. If one of my siblings wrote a book like this where the text goes out of its way to forgive and empathize with the abuser who tormented someone I love, I would be fuming. If they wrote those acknowledgements? No contact. It would be absolutely despicable.
THIS WAS EXACTLY WHAT I FELT READING IT. It was easily the most infuriating part of the book for me.
the thing that really gets me about this book is I was colleen hoover. like we experienced the same/similar childhoods. And still, she writes about it with no grace or nuance despite having literally lived through it. I think a competent writer would have been able to write something interesting about internalizing your parents abusive relationship and turning it into an interesting piece of fiction but this is just bad. I think it's also just weird that she continues to excuse her 'fathers' character's behavior in her other work.
Seriously. I wrote things I have experienced in my stories. Even went to do some things for research to have that first hand experience, and I feel what I wrote about them is vivid and true, and I don't even consider myself very self aware. And here she wrote a book about something that happened in her life and made it so paper thin? Rachel oates did the video about the sequel to this book and referenced how much better dv is written in children books by Jacqueline Wilson. Smh.
obviously I don't know her, but based on her books I think she never really unpacked what happened to her in a serious way... in the authorʼs note it's also clear that she considers her fatherʼs abuse of her mother as something external to him (if this makes sense), rather than him just being an abusive man
I genuinely think she needs some therapy to unpack why her father's behavior in her characters gets her hot
it’s screaming victim who hasn’t come to terms with what happened to them. i knew a girl once who was SA’d and she liked to write stories. And I just remember she sent me this one “romance” about a teacher and a student (high school) that she wrote and I was like 💀girl idk how to tell you this, but that’s not romantic, that’s abusive and predatory. and we had a long conversation about it.
colleen hoover’s novels read like she never had someone around to tell her she was unconsciously (god i hope its unconscious bc otherwise she has no excuse) perpetuating her own trauma in her books.
@@SilentProti that Lola Rose dv scene Rachel read out was so impactful
I remember reading it as a kid and really feeling for the characters
Even the dad, to an extent
Jacqueline has so much compassion and sensitivity in her writing, yet it’s still grounded
It’s honestly kinda funny that, when you have no knowledge of CoHo, this book is a pretty middling and not very well written exploration of abuse, but when you actually know anything about her other books it’s all that and also outrageously hypocritical
Like in her mind abuse is fine unless they physically put their hands on you. And even then it’s probably fine if you’re labelled a bitch
You’ll learn to like it! 🤮 (sarcasm)
As someone who grew up being abused in every way, and had one abusive relationship as a teen before I met my partner for 26 years before Glioblastoma took him... I really don't like this book, or any other book this woman writes. The fact that other people love these books is appalling.
Alizee is right. This is a book about toxic and abusive relationships. Full stop.
The thing that gets me about the flower shop is a flower shop specifically to cater to a goth/alternative aesthetic isn’t a terrible idea. It’s a niche market, but in a big city like Boston you may actually be better off trying to corner a specific niche than to compete with every other generic florist in the city. But somehow that idea morphs into “flower shop for people who hate flowers” which is both stupid on the face of it and implies a lack of understanding of the culture/aesthetic she wants to market to.
I agree! A goth flower shop sounds awesome. Instead of saying it’s for “people who hate flowers” they could say it’s for “people who find beauty in darkness” or something like that
You mean you DON’T go out of your way to go buy the shit you hate?! /s
I agree that a goth flower shop is interesting, and also that the idea of “for the people who hate what we sell is so fucking stupid.
I feel like Collen has a button with "SEX" Witten on it every time she has a complex situation
She’s polluted the word “sex.” I’m gonna start using “seggs” from now on. (I’m kidding.)
or TRAP WOMAN INSIDE ROOM AND ROMANTICISE IT if things get real dicey
Imagine her pressing the button repeatedly, with that intense expression in her eyes that she usually gets in promotional photoshoots.
I’m kind of revolted to realize only now that per Colleen’s view, what “ends with them” is not actually the pattern of abuse itself, but the bad relationship of children with their fathers. What?? Because leaving for your own sake doesn’t matter, does it? It’s all so your child can have an untarnished view of their shithead dad. Lmao this makes me so angry.
TW: physical abuse
I'm not exactly sure how to write this down but I wish to share my own thoughts as someone whose father physically abused their mother. Before I go into it, I would like to state that my mum left my father when I was around 3 years old, so everything I have heard of this situation is just from the people involved (mainly my mum) or who knew about it and, while it has definitely left its mark on me, I have absolutely no memories of any of it. The reason that finally made my mother decide to leave was apparently when I begged my father, as a toddler, to "stop hurting mum" after he had once again beat her. They were never married so the seperation process was fairly simple but I was told by my mum that there were a couple of times my father would come and beg for her to come back to him but she managed to not give in to his empty promises. My mum had full custody of me.
The thing is, however, after a couple of years my mum started allowing my father to have me over at his place and I would spend every other Christmas at my father's. For our yearly summer visits I was accompanied by my mother but for those Christmas visits, I was alone at my father's place. My mum did this because she "wanted me to have a father figure in my life". I do not agree with her decision, I believe it was very risky and stupid of her to let her own child be alone with a man who beat her.
It is true that my father never physically hurt me as far as I can remember, but that does not change my mind in thinking that my mum's decision wasn't a good one when it came to my relationship with my father. I do not believe a person capable of any kind of abuse should be allowed around children. Regardless of if one thinks they wouldn't hurt a child because they hadn't done so before, that can change at any time. Even the smallest mistake could lead to terrible concequences and it would be because a parent was willing to let their abusive (ex-)partner be around their child. I was lucky my father never physically abused me but there was never a quarantee he wouldn't and at any moment there could have been a moment where he hurt me.
There are many reasons for why aside from just the above but I do not like my father. I despise him for all he has done and as such I cannot even comprehend Colleen Hoover's "but he was a good father" mindset. It honestly makes my blood boil with frustration. And this whole book feels insensitive and ignorant, despite the fact that whe was quite literally "writing what she knows". Not to even get into how they are handling the promo for the movie.
I'm not really sure how to end this other than saying I wish I could shoot Colleen Hoover off into space so she can never write again.
Anyway, thanks to anyone who read this whole ramble, that was very wholesome of you. Cheers!
My biggest problem with this is how the book and film were advertised as romance when it gets flipped on its head midway through. Neither of them even provide resources for the survivors of DV they claim to care for and want to help....
(…Except for Justin. He tried)
Yeah he really did... I feel so frustrated on his behalf fr. He seemed to actually really care and tried so hard to convey the story in the best way AND provide resources for survivors
@@groovycoconut97 the ads are wild! I’ve gotten a few different ads and, if it wasn’t for the drama coverage, I would have thought the movie was your standard romance / rom-com 😬
I got the impression that CoHo wanted to advertise it as a romance to preserve the "twist" and shock the reader, making them share the MC's experience of falling in love and then be taken aback and confused when things take a turn. Which in a way I can understand, it's definitely a different experience going into it knowing it will be an abusive relationship - though she didn't even successfully execute that, since Ryle wasn't likeable from the beginning. Her incompetence as a writer combined with her wanting to advertise it as a romance made the abuse points kinda get lost.
Thought of you today Alizee. One of my old middle school teachers was gushing on Facebook to her boomer friends about how the movie was sooooo good, bUt NoT aS gOoD aS ThE bOoK™, and now I think I understand why we never saw eye to eye on the teen dystopian romances she forced me to read back then..
Anyone who thinks this book is good should never recommend media ever.
What teen dystopians did you disagree with if you remember? Love to see if they have similar problematic themes
@@CatChaos369I hope they respond 😭
@@CatChaos369Just the absolute bottom of the barrel Hunger Games clones you can think of. I remember her being super big mad that I DNF'ed one called Delirium where the concept was basically "Like, what if the government took away love?" with the requisite love triangle plot of course. And I remember she really liked Divergent too.
I'm sad she's a teacher.
i almost feel bad for CoHo. you can tell she lacks the emotional tools to process the fact that her father was a terrible person who she still somehow loved, and she romantizes his memory to deal with the complicated pain of losing him. it's kind of heartbreaking. but pushing an apologetic narrative in regards to abusive men and profiting off of it is unforgivable
And then she literally was a social worker before she wrote a book. Like it makes you wonder hie her mind set affected her job.
I'm so glad you said this because it's EXACTLY what I've been thinking. She wants to condemn abuse while forgiving them at the same time
9:40 - I’m already laughing. He “smells like money” - money smells disgusting ?? Have you ever caught a whiff of some loose change ?? 🤢 Mmm love a man that reeks like a handful of dirty pennies
Mmmmm, metal and hand sweat 😂
You’re so right. Anytime I touch change my hand smells so weird afterwards
I don’t think it’s meant literally … I think it’s implying he’s wearing expensive cologne
@@bellat6889
Why not just say he smells like expensive cologne?
@@greywalker505bc it's figurative language - a metaphor. That's what authors do.....
Hoover is not *just* overrated, but downright a terrible writer by any measure.
I have read excerpts of her work, downright indigestible...
A testament to the sad fact, that average readers do not care about quality. All they want is smutty schlock, featuring self inserts and male leads straight out of a Hallmark mold.
average readers definitely care about quality, but this sort of literature is so normalized and overhyped that they THINK this is quality. it's sad.
Listennnn, smut and schlock are two of the greatest pleasures life has to offer BUT.
IT CAN BE DONE WELL. And it SHOULD be well-written, well-planned, well-meaning, it should just be......well.
And CoHo's writing is _not well._ It's very unwell, it's almost insultingly bad, childish & outdated, and u can tell that the author has NO RESPECT for her readers or their intelligence. I could forgive amateurish stuff like this if it was written by a literal teenager or if it was just on the Internet for free, but CoHo gets PAID for this garbage!! It's ridiculous!!
How many better writers are out there, who will never get the chance to share their work with the world just bc they don't have the same advantages as CoHo? How many great stories are being eclipsed by this shallow, prepackaged crap?? CoHo is to literature what "fast fashion" is to the ancient art of weaving: it's cheap, it's tacky, and it's bad for the environment, and I reserve the right to be grumpy about it bc I am now old 😤
We can have books that are fun AND well-written at the same time!!! I promise u that books like this exist!! They're just.....not written by CoHo 😅
@@bbo7002Oh, there is definitely a place for indulgent and smutty books. I was not discounting that branch of writing.
But as you said, Colleen Hoover does not make for a good representative.
As Guinevere Beck in the appropriately marketed YOU would say, “At the end of the day, people really are disappointing, aren’t they?”
@@RyubearSaysGao oh my bad, I hope I didn't seem too aggressive?? Ur comment definitely doesn't come off negatively, I was just taking a silly approach to my reply bc......I'm silly 😅
Yes, we are indeed in agreement! Sorry for any confusion lol 😅
This book feels like a personal attack to me. As a ginger who wants to be a florist and also likes the Bruins, the only thing making this worse is young me wanting to be called Lilli. Now my name's Riley which also does not help.
I don't know if this is better, but I always think of the bad ass dog from Call of Duty Ghosts, who is named Riley. A missile in fuzzy form, nothing could stop Riley from getting to their target.
I actually named myself after him!!
@@eres9334 That is AWESOME ❤🎉
smoking weed before my waitress shift - 😊
smoking weed while on call as a neurosurgeon - 😢
forgetting a customer's drink order bc you're stoned: 😂😅
forgetting what part of the brain exactly you had to cut bc you're stoned: 😢😔
I’m not at all anti-weed, even for surgeons, but if you’re on-call…no weed, no alcohol, nothing that can impair you.
This is absolutely disturbing. There is no way anyone can rationalize an abusive person being involved in their childrens lives despite the fact they beat their partner. Thats absolutely disgusting and lacking any sort of empathy for the victim.
It makes it even more disturbing when you think about the fact that she was a social worker. How many women did she dismiss, and how many abusive men did she support in getting access to their children?
@Jo-ih4yy I'm so worried for those families. Knowing she potentially saw a woman in distress and completely disregarded her safety. It's completely heartwrenching, especially knowing how many people agree with allowing an abuser to not face the consequences of their actions because they don't see women as people.
i truly believe that one of the biggest issues of this book is the ending. no, staying together for the "child's benefit" is not the answer, especially in situations like this. it creates a dangerous and toxic environment for the child to grow up in, and it can be harmful for the child, and especially harmful for the victim. another issue is the advertising of the book. there is no reason under any circumstance that this book should be advertised as a romance novel, same thing goes for the movie. (hope this makes sense). if the novel was so concerned about exploring DV and how it is portrayed, they could've added resources, help lines, and they could've given a portion of the money earned to charities and non-profit organizations that aid individuals that have been in abusive relationships or have experience domestic violence.
It honestly baffled me that she wrote that. It's already crazy enough that people believe that couples that don't like each other should still stay together for their children but to add abuse on top of that and STILL THINK they should stay together?? Collen hoover is trying to get more families murdered by abusive men.
And the fact the Mc doesn't hold the abuser responisble and not because she doesn't have enough evidence or etc. But because she doesn't want a nt to hurt his career and thinks ysing their daughter as an example to make him understand abusing her was wrong. Like he never understood it before.
Agree 100%.
It's like 50 shades all over again. EL James also made a fuckton of money writing about a subject - bdsm - she knew NOTHING about and misrepresented it to the moon and back. This kind of bullshit has to be its own genre one day I swear.
This book is so badly written. When Lily gets hit by Ryle, she’s shocked because she’s “never felt anything like that before” (along those lines) when previously she’d described watching her mother being abused and her dad eventually hitting her. What do you mean you’ve never felt being hit before ??
she could have been journaling out the trauma of living with her abusive father and watching her mother being abuse but no she only wants to journal when she mets atlas 🙄
her letters to Ellen also sound exactly the same as her present day narration, which likewise begins at the moment she meets a ~hot guy~.
her character hasn't changed since age 15 smh 😔
@@user-zq6sz2cr6gtbh I've seen a tweet where a lot of girls said they were writing life stories in dms to celebrities. But at least not in English, so probably Harry styles wouldn't bother to read about some high school drama
The thing about "simplistic" writing is that it actually takes a LOT of skill to write both simply and effectively. To use your example, Stephen King is easy to read, but his writing is also evocative and precise. He conveys strong images and ideas with "simple" word choices, so his works feel a lot richer than they maybe seem at first glance.
CoHo (from all I've seen) is less "deep lake" and more "wide puddle". Her writing is simple but lacks the skill it would take to make that work in her favour.
I deeply despise Colleen Hoover, and even more so for exploiting her mother's trauma in this way. Not for one second I believe that this is a deeply personal novel to her and a labour of love. Not with her writing every single one of her male leads who we're supposed to root for in the way she does. It's despicable. Also: I lost respect for Blake Lively for not only partaking in this dumpster fire but for her conduct after the fact.
Thank you for talking about this book, I've heard people mention it as a POSITIVE portrait of abuse and the consequences, and the abuse yes but the consequences...? No, hell no, its a gruelling g process for an abuser to change and not just something that happens because you love them or because they love their kid. Stop. Interestingly though, I think maybe now we can understand a bit why Colleen wouldn't recognise a healthy, loving relationship and appropriate, respectful love from a man even if it did the conga naked before her.
I recently scrolled past someone else’s video because I was like “no I’ve watched too many videos about this same book” but then when I saw yours I didn’t even hesitate to click
3 hour movie: 🤢
3 hours of Alizee talking about something I’ll never read or watch: 😌👏👏👏
Blake is not… a great person? She’s said and done some shitty things outside this whole thing. But I think her reaction and promotion and such is perfectly in line with what CoHo wanted you to walk away with. She’s promoting it the way a lot of women would. You’re supposed to think it’s a cute romcom. You’re supposed to root for Ryle. She’s walked away from this with the full intent the book did. Coho “fell in love with Ryle” and that made her intent not come through. Because Ryle is not a bad person in her view. He’s just damaged and needs the right woman.
The director I think had such a wake up call on realising CoHo had no interest in writing about abuse with the way she’s promoting the movie.
im still side eyeing justin baldoni for agreeing to work on this project, like did he not read the book and think it was concerning?
@@nostradamus1162 I think he saw the potential for this to be a good story, and he’s not wrong about that. Bad books can make good movies with the right changes, which he apparently wanted to do. The version that’s out is the one Blake did, and since she kisses CoHo’s ass, guess which one CoHo went with despite it rating lower with test audiences.
Unfortunately, the women involved are shit people, and his right idea about wanting the voices of women ended up being the wrong women.
people who don't like flowers don't buy flowers. i mean i would have done something contrary in a school assignment, but not as a real business plan. only if i knew the shop was in like a cottage goth neighborhood
On the topic of shitty MMC from CoHo, let's not forget Ben forcing himself on Fallon at the beginning of November 9. He doesn't 🍇 her but he takes off her dress and forces kisses on her and feels her scars that she's ashamed of. Then bullies her into a dress she doesn't want to wear because it shows off her scars.
Actually…the first printing had that scene go all the way. The publisher forced her to edit it before a second printing.
Oh! And also, Fallon’s mom sides with him because HE has scars TOO…they’re just on the INSIDE.
I would have liked this book in middle school in the worst way. She writes like I did when I thought I was an edgy teen and had no understanding of adult relationships... 😅
Aww, don’t feel too bad about (perceived or actual) cringey things you’d have liked as a teenager. I mean, that’s the whole point of growing up. It’s when you’re like 35+ years old and still trying to justify the existence of COHO’s books that we start to worry for humanity. And that’s why adults are supposed to be looking out for and protecting kids (this includes teenagers) - bc kids really don’t know too much about some important things, and their decision making abilities can be really shit.
@@Samantha2209 I don't mind the existence of the books as such... It's their level of success and the way their fans defend them blindly that chills the blood in my veins.
And THAT is the scariest thing. Lots of teenagers like these books and they can get them off the shelves pretty easily because they are marketed as YA romance with pretty pastel covers! I mean holy shit, at least with Twilight you were expecting some darker themes simply because you knew that the vampirism element has had some... BAGGAGE throughout the history of literature, and anywhere it reappeared it gained more. You don't even need much media literacy to understand what vampire + fair maiden means, AND to understand what age group should be reading such dark fantasy romance. But this...? This is truly unpredictable and I am baffled that CoHo books are not all marked as 18+.
i mean i thought twilight was great writing and a fantastic romance novel when i was in middle school.... its fine, its middle school
The thing about coho books is they feel, like those “women written by men” things, but a woman literally wrote it
28:37: Ebony Darkness Dementia Raven Way opens a flower shop
35:09 Did Colleen Hoover really write that Ryle was about a foot away from Lily just after he’d been petting her ankle? That’s a terrible joke and I don’t think she even made it on purpose.
Something just occurred to me. WHY would it be "cliche" to keep a diary? Most people don't keep diaries. Especially teenagers and children have a lot of trouble maintaining an effortful habit like that. But it's also not weird. It's a normal thing someone could do. It's like saying that going to therapy for your mental health is cliche, or taking ballet lessons as a kid is cliche. It's just something people do. Maybe you could say it was typical or stereotypical for the type or demographic of person you might be. But trite and cliche? So what does CoHo mean by that?
I have no problem with a diary addressed to someone. I feel like that's normal also. I think it's cliche because Lily is a book protagonist and it's a trope. Lily is aware that she's a protagonist, so she says it's cliche. Or rather, CoHo cannot sufficiently inhabit her characters as fully formed individuals separate from her relationship to them as a writer long enough to write even their internal monologues entirely from their own point of view. The characters are painfully self referential to the medium they exist in. Like Marvel movies making quips from the POV of their own genre savvy, only not actually even funny or clever as a quip, or even insightful about the medium itself (see: all the discussions of books in November 9).
I've thought this before in how her protags refer to themselves, like they are aware of their own types and don't even consider themselves as individuals (in between bouts of "not like other girls" -isms). It's like actions and scenes can't be described without the protags wondering whether they are in character for them.
OMG BABE WAKE UP ALIZEE’S TEARING UP COHO AGAIN
Seeing Coho making all these books and now a movie, somehow she can still roll in the dough. I respect the hustle, but as someone who writes fics for free its like the clockwork orange torture scene
Edit: 1:03:10 idk why that description of Ryle i just think of that sf6 video of Luke saying "dude, you look huge!"
Not 😭 clockwork orange
This had me wheezing
36:52 you pronounced languid right. The only things ppl can't pronounce in Hoover books are the characters' names. 👍
I’ve heard more than 0 people say Kincaid like “Kinsade” and I forgive it bc at least I can imagine that one Thomas rolling in his kitsch grave. Unintentional (kin)shade that they don’t even know his kin’s name.
@@overthinker5805Allysa is pretty bad, too. Ally-sa? All-ysa? Why are you trying to give me a stroke, Colleen!?!
When you read the "you're not a monster Ryle" part my laptop spazzed out and distorted the video sound, even it knows that's a lie.
"he's not lurpack, he's margarine" made me giggle
Her overuse of italics always made me irrationally angry
Seriously, you and Rachel need to collab. The video would be perfect!
Oats? They have collaborated. (:
This intro always makes me think of the poem about suicide in BoJack Horseman - The View from Halfway Down.
Don’t mess with shit you’re ill equipped to discuss, CoHo. (Also you were a social worker?!? Do so much better!!!)
COHO WAS A SOCIAL WORKER???? HOW
I think it’s weird that CoHo wrote not only an awful representation of DV, but also spicy scenes involving a man she admitted to modeling after her father and what feels like a self insert mixed with her mom???
Thanks for having the conversation my book club wouldn't.
if I was on a roof with ryle and his response to hearing about my abuser was "there's no bad people, only people who do bad things sometimes" I would've pushed him right over the edge
Amen to this. I think I was too young to understand just how problematic the MMCs in CoHo's books are, but I know I loved them to pieces. So much so that, after reading Slammed (which was my first CoHo experience) I bought all the other books that were available IN ONE GO. The bag was too heavy for me to carry. 😂 But on another note... is it just me or are all the FMCs just trying really hard to be quirky and not like other girls?
Edit: I read the book in German and the fake-cry thing in chapter 2 was changed to 'scream' which takes away a lot of the weirdness in that scene. 😂
Funnily enough, Slammed was also CoHo’s first CoHo experience (in other words, it was her debut novel.)
Do you follow Honestly Sophie? She’s German and I love her takes on these and other popular books.
It says a lot about an author's style that translators have to try to give more sense to what she wrote in her own language 😂
@@user-zq6sz2cr6gHarry Potter translator wrote he cut down a lot of "x said" bc he believed children are smart enough to follow who's speaking.
@@SilentProti Tbh, that sounds like overstepping. Translating is a harder job than most people imagine, and at some points you have to make decisions. But you shouldn't change the structure of a text, or deliberately alter the author's choices, tempting as it might be. You're translating somebody else's finished work, not judging and marking a school essay.
Knowing how Hoover became rich without much talent makes me want to get into writing, too. I need the money.
God pls take all of Justin baldoni's pain and suffering from this movie and give it to coho tenfold jfc
It kinda makes me laugh (but honestly in a very sad way) that occasionally you'll think 'oh gosh, is Colleen being clever here?' and it's just...the answer is never actually yes. It's never a clever analogy or allegory, or a fun Easter egg or meme thing, they're just weirdly random blips or unoriginal thoughts cut out from cleverer media or worse, three seconds later she'll punt you over the head with what it actually is (repeatedly if she can) because she's just as dense as she expects her readers to be.
I will acknowledge that she has a unique skill for naming character, though I will add, this is a curse, not a gift. They're always the stupidest names imaginable. It's like she picks random objects and shuffles a few letters around.
people are confused about why the marketing around the movie has been such a disaster and there’s a simple answer-the source material is garbage. coho is a hack and her attempt at writing about more serious topics does not legitimize her as a serious author. her perspective on DV is problematic at best and deeply harmful at worst-of course the movie and the majority of people involved in it are not going to be capable of providing an intelligent and empathetic exploration of the topic
I honestly thought you already reviewed It ends with us. Shows how similar all her books are.
1:05:00 is such a queen behavior. istfg, one day the asylum is gonna claim me, having gone insane from all of the babying and mental gymnastics everybody on the internet feels obligated to do, because god forbid somebody on the internet gets offended. we need more channels like yours, Alizee. never change.
I'm sorry, she dedicated a book inspired by her witnessing her father's violence against her mother to her father????
Thrilled to see another video but I have to address the most important detail: THAT’S how Maude died???? I watched the Simpsons on and off as a kid and vaguely remember her dying but death by t-shirt cannon is bonkers and I love it.
2:06:20 I have two daughters and never have I ever „dreamed of“ THEIR wedding or thought of them as incubators to mY gRAndBaBiEs 💀💀 my oldest (7) has expressed multiple times that she doesn’t want to have children, ever and I don’t CAAAARE JAHHAHHAHA I just want them to do what makes them happy. I’m gobsmacked at this type of parent 😬😬😬
it’s normal to want grand babies actually
@@drownzi it’s normal to like the idea of having grandbabies. It’s not normal to obsess over your children’s love lives and reproductive organs by constantly pressuring them and dreaming about them having children. Pregnancy is extremely hard on the Body and raising children requires strong mental health and the willingness to give up on most of your needs, boundaries and all of your privacy. It is the mosh difficult thing I, personally, ever had to do, because it takes such a toll on your mind AND body. I don’t want my children to do anything, that they aren’t ready to do yet. And I will be just as happy, if both of them stay child free. Their lives aren’t about what I want. It’s about what they want out of it.
I just find it so strange out of everyone she could choose to pick for her to write to, she picks Ellen?! It’s just so random
CoHo pulp can really just be summed up as
'Cyclical violence and abuse are ok as long as hes sexy, rich, ans says sorry as hes hurting you"
This is like writing a book about the horrors of WW2 and dedicating it to Adolf Hitler.
I think the ending bothers me so much because so often women don't have a choice to keep abusive men out of their and their children's lives because the court orders them to have visitation/shared custody because of the perpetuation of ideas like "oh well he never hit the kids". This also traps women who are afraid to leave because at least if she's there she might be able to protect the kids but if she leaves he'll have unsupervised visitation or shared custody time with them. And abusive parents (particularly men) have been known to kidnap or kill their children to "punish" the ex partner.
And Colleen should be familiar with all that as a social worker! And yet she's writing this where Lily prioritizes her daughter having time with her abusive father and worrying about their relationship instead of her safety.
it's astounding how bad coho is at writing healthy relationships. I'm convinced if you cut out the endings to all her books and/or had someone read a chapter of each and say which book is the one where the love interest is made to be abusive it'd be really hard to tell. The only difference between this one and others is that there's more overt physical abuse. My money is on Nov 9th for being one of the top guessing for the book specifically written about abuse because god is that a messed up book.
I think you missed an important reason people do have or adopt kids: they've always liked kids and wanted to be a parent. I don't really think there is a purely selfless choice in having or not having kids, but some people at least like kids, endeavor to care for them well, and respect them as independent people without expecting anything in return. Otherwise we are animals. Most of us have a biological imperative to reproduce. Though the more stressed we are the less that imperative influences us.
“Wisdom is chasing Colleen Hoover, but she’s faster.” GOLD.
OMG HOW DID YOU GET THIS OUT SO FAST, love that for us!
I was sat in the cinema about to watch the film and I hear a girl talking to her friend, saying she'd forgive Ryle and take him back. Then i started getting reels on mt algorithm about "reasons to love Ryle." It's really not good.
😧
can someone please please PLEASE do a compilation of Alizee saying "behave!"
[insert spongeboob I NEED IT gif]
I want a mash-up of Alizee's "Behave" and Rachel Oates's "Stop it".
Oh goody, I've already watched Rachel Oates video on this but I'll watch you review it too cuz I'm interested in your take and of course, the humour in which you present sensitive subjects to make them more digestible.
A lot of my friends love this book and the film. The book is under romance, so maybe that's why it's marketed so romance? I have come to the conclusion that some people just like to read mindlessly, so they don't mind if something is written poorly or promotes toxic behavior and relationships. They're content with surface level thoughts.
I used to be pissed off at Colleen, but now, in the words of John Coffey, “I’m tired, boss.” She, Anna Todd, Penelope Douglas, and so many others write all these toxic characters, then try to justify their toxicity to make us care about them. That alone would make me upset, but then Colleen has the nerve to deliberately write an abusive character and call his abuse out. That wouldn’t be a problem if-as you said-all of her toxic characters didn't act just like Ryle. It just makes me think, “Oh. So you knew what we were thinking all along and you only now show the abuse to be just that.” It doesn't feel good, it feels like she’s mocking us, like she could have written all of these horrible characters as horrible people instead of portraying them as sympathetic. Trauma is one thing, trauma as an excuse is another. I’m basically rehashing what you said, Alizee, but the point is, all I can do is give an exasperated sigh by now.
On an unrelated note, she wouldn't approve of abortion even if one of her characters was implanted with a goddamn Xenomorph.
"Boston has better everything, except girls"
And with that a state of war began between Colleen Hoover and Massholes
Coho gotta be extra traumatized from what her dad did to her mom when in her, in my opinion, "best book" cuz the man is at least called out for being an abusive dingus, she tries so hard, through Lily, to paint Ryle as just being "broken" and Lily should "reconsider" leaving him entirely and not allow him to visit his kid unsupervised.. She even has lily call herself "like her father" bc she told off her abuser
As a person who has been in an abusive relationship, I did feel like I was the abuser often, because he was so broken and sad and I was just doing everything wrong. It was the grooming talking, and that's also how I took it when I read it at least.
*phew* you do the Lord's work. I can actually learn the plot with you as a buffer. Hell would freeze over before I gave Hoover my cash.
This has so little to do with anything, but how in the hell do you make a vase out of velvet? Like, you cover a glass or plastic vase with fabric? That’s gonna be so hard to clean!
Let’s go! All my homies hate CoHo
What does CoHo have against the word "florist" please someone save me from the words "floral shop"
The fact that this book won awards for romance gives me so much relief because i feel like a few choice examples of classic literature also got a lot of notoriety for the wrong reasons and everyone just forgot about that.
15:37 I agree with this sentiment, actually. As a mental health worker, I have to. But there's something to be said about people who do bad things and do nothing to change that.
Alizee's book reviews have a chokehold on me, I've just finished the video and it's past 1 am. Who needs sleep?
13:34 quick disagree with that statement; it can be so out of the question for many of us to say we hate/don't love a deeply flawed parent or relative, particularly when traditional family values have been so deeply embedded in our family culture
Yes, it's very difficult to do in many situations, but it's *possible* and a lot of people do it. She didn't tell people who to love, she just said people shouldn't assume it's a given.
I hadn’t read CoHo before (and don’t plan to). And you know, hearing the contents of this book, I don’t feel too bad about my own writing.
5:32 There's a Golden Gate Bridge jump survivor who's now a mental health advocate. Unsurprisingly, he describes _instant regret_ as the norm.
"this book turned me athiest" ~ the big alizee yeezy
Yessss I needed a new book review to watch. Hope you’re doing better ❤ but thank you for the new video ❤️❤️
Well! I was just about going to sleep, how quickly plans change
I could get fake crying when people are around, as a joke, but alone it's just wierdo behavior
Well i had planned on sleeping right now but whats a few hours less sleep for alizee
Thank you for reading this, so I don't have to ( ◜‿◝ )♡
I'm also sorry about the riots. I hope people stay safe.
I was waiting for this because no way in hell was I going to watch that movie of read this book.
I really love you.
love u alizee i hope this boosts the video in someone’s algorithm
When Ryle came to Lily’s home and begged her for s3x is when I completely checked out with that book. Didn’t even bother finishing it
no word on the damage her dad's punch did to her mom's skull? interesting..
I had to stop EVERYTHING I was doing, I’ve been waiting for this one 😭!