Book Club

[bargainsgirl]

Has anyone read these?  I have spoken to 3 people and one person liked the book(Verity) and the other 2 thought they were not so good.  Right now she has about 8 on the best seller list.  They seem like mass market and mass produced books to me.  I wonder how one person can write so many books???she must have co writers...I don't care for those kinds of books.

[kindred cats]

I'm glad you asked since I've wondered the same thing.  I see those books everywhere.

[judy0330]

I liked Verity.  Colleen Hoover is HUGE right now.  I have read a lot of her books and enjoyed them.  Not great literature but good storylines.  There is a Colleen Hoover Facebook group with 147K members.  I think that -- and word of mouth from her fans -- is at least in part responsible for her current popularity.  These people are serious fans!

[Bookplate]

There is an interesting article about her in today's New York Times

How Colleen Hoover Rose to Rule the Best-Seller List - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[Bhvbum]

Just looked them up on my library site for audiobooks:  "November 9", 15 copies, 12 weeks wait. 

"Ugly Love", 18 copies 12 weeks

"It ends with us" 24 copies 11 weeks. 

Just one example so they must be pretty popular with a lot of people. I've never read any of them, I also saw the article in the New York Times. 

I'm just happy people are still reading something. 

[gardenman]

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@Bookplate wrote:

There is an interesting article about her in today's New York Times

How Colleen Hoover Rose to Rule the Best-Seller List - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

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I knew Colleen back in 2012 when she entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and was a regular on the ABNA forums. She was hilarious. We had a lot of fun back then. She got eliminated early in the contest in 2012 by one of the Vine reviewers who didn't like her novel. (I managed to get through to the semi-finals which was then the top fifty of five thousand general fiction entries. I didn't make the cut to the top three, but I like to think I finished fourth, though fiftieth of five thousand isn't shabby either.) Colleen hung around the forums for a few years after the ABNA even after she had a publishing deal. 

The story at the time was that after being eliminated she went ahead and self-published her novel and sold all of seven (or so) copies. She knew who six of the buyers were and thought a seventh buyer was likely a co-worker who didn't like it and was afraid to tell her that. It turned out the seventh buyer was a book blogger who'd bought it on a whim and loved it. The blogger posted about it online and sales went through the roof. The blogger had like a million readers and many of them bought whatever book she suggested.

One of the blog readers was an editor for one of the bigger publishing houses. She bought the book, loved it, and called Colleen asking who her agent was. Colleen had tried and failed to get an agent and the editor gave her a list of agents to call and tell them that the editor wanted Colleen's book. She called the top guy on the list who agreed to take her. The rest is history.

Colleen has gone on to be rich and famous. She writes her own stuff and like every writer she had a lot of semi-written books even back in 2012. Most writers I know can churn out five to ten thousand words a day on good days when the story is flowing so producing new books isn't that much of a challenge. Getting people to read them is the hard part and that's where Colleen excels.

She is a very funny, genuine person who's a lot of fun to be around. (Or was back in 2012-2015 when the ABNA forums were active.) 

[beckyb1012]

They are very good, I have loved all her books I have read.  The library sent me and email that her latest. "Reminders Of Him" is finally mine to pick up.

[Sooner]

Most of the time now "best seller" means I avoid it like the plague.  

[Jasmine19]

I've only read one of her books "Verity", and didn't care for it at all. The mix of unlikable characters and frequent graphic sex didn't appeal to me.

[hgsuddle]

Adding my two cents: I work in a library and her books have wait lists in the hundreds. All of them.  So I put "It Ends with Us" on hold and when I got it, I read it. Well, I should say I plodded through it.  I thought it was tedious.  I finished it and now I am done reading her books. She definitely is a self-made author who has done very well for herself.  I just gravitate toward other types of books I guess.  Just finished "Mad Honey" by Jodi Picoult and it was pretty good. Not my favorite by her, but very timely and better written.