The ranking of all rankings: The most irritating Colleen Hoover books to ever exist

Colleen Hoover is a very controversial writer, but also a very successful one, and ranking her discography of books has been on my bucket list for a while. She’s one of the best selling authors in the world, but has often been subject to mixed reviews for just piling on the trauma and frustrating plot lines and has even been accused of glorifying abuse in some cases.

With the It Ends With Us film coming out at the end of the week, what better time than now to create a ranking of the most irritating Colleen Hoover books?

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7. November 9

This book really had its ups and downs. I liked it in the beginning but the plot made me very frustrated and it became difficult to read after a while. However the romance was spot on and felt very real.

6. It Starts With Us

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It’s really strange to love a sequel and hate the original novel, but It Starts With Us just gave me that closure that I needed and the happy ending I wanted to see (ish). It was satisfying to see Lily go all in with Atlas after so much torture slugging through the pages of her relationship with Ryle. It also felt a lot more professionally written than its predecessor, but I suppose that’s down to the fact that Colleen wrote It Ends With Us almost ten years prior. I applaud her sequel skills here, but it still makes the list because Ryle exists in this universe.

5. Layla

This irritated me for a multitude of reasons. Firstly because the main guy is called Leeds which just reminds me of actual Leeds. Secondly because the ex girlfriend is called Sable. Colleen Hoover please take a day off from the random name generator.

Plot wise, the book was just very very sad and depressing. There isn’t a lot of light at the end of the tunnel, and then it gets all supernatural vibes which kind of killed my interest. Sorry to all the Layla stans out there but this just wasn’t my cup of tea at all!

4. Verity

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I actually loved the plot for this book, but I just felt like it missed the mark on a lot of things. It tried to be a horror, thriller, mystery and romance all at once and it irritates me that it doesn’t successfully do any of those things. I won’t spoil the twist, just in case you decide to read it, but I will say that you’re probably better off just watching Gone Girl instead.

3. Never Never

I don’t even know where to start with this one. The whole plot feels like a fever dream: Two lovers wake up as strangers and try to figure out what happened. Make it make sense because all it’s making me is angry.

Also, when will Colleen start giving her characters normal names? No I don’t want to read about a man called Silas.

2. Ugly Love

The book really lives up to its title. I just found this whole “I’ve got all this trauma but I’m not going to tell you until the end of the book” plot really tiring. Miles obviously has past trauma but he probably should have tried to work through that alone before dragging Tate into it, and I don’t want to hear anyone saying “I know but it was no strings attached” because let’s be real, it never is. ESPECIALLY not in a Colleen Hoover book, thus Ugly Love gets a high ranking on the irritating scale.

1. It Ends With Us

Sorry, but nobody will EVER make me like this book. I’m sorry Colleen, I just hate Ryle with so much passion that he had to end up at number one. He was a walking red flag from the minute he was up on that rooftop acting like he was so much better than Lily. If that were me I would have taken one look at him and been on my merry way.

Maybe it’s an ode to Colleen that she can make me feel such strong emotions after reading, and you can bet I’ll be in the cinema on Friday watching the film still.

Also, I actually just can’t bear that the main character is called Lily Bloom and she’s a florist. Sorry but Wattpad is calling.

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