A bestselling author, a new novel, a cancer diagnosis … then, the disclaimers

1 month ago 23

After 14 years of writing, romance author Colleen Hoover – who, alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2023 – has “enough IP to rival Marvel”.

So a profile published by Elle in November gushed as it crowned Hoover the “new queen of Hollywood”. In September, journalist Kayla Webley Adler joined Hoover on the set of Reminders of Him, Universal’s coming film adaptation of the author’s novel of the same name, for a lengthy discussion that even touched on the “circus” that It Ends with Us, thanks to Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s legal battle, had become.

But there was something Hoover was hiding.

Bestselling author Colleen Hoover (centre) has had to issue multiple disclaimers in the lead-up to the release of her new book Woman Down.

“I was in Canada most of the year filming Reminders of Him and had recurring health issues that I continued to put off until the movie was finished,” Hoover wrote in a December 18 message to her fans in a private Facebook group. “When I returned home, I found out I had cancer.”

Hoover did not disclose the type of cancer but reassured her fans she was “OK”, and surgery to remove it had been successful.

“It felt huge and scary for a bit, and I had to miss out on the Regretting You premiere and some other important career and personal moments,” she wrote. “I just wasn’t ready to share with anyone until I knew what the outcome would be.”

In mid-January, Hoover told her 1.9 million Instagram followers she had finished radiotherapy.

“I’m doing much better,” Hoover wrote. “My cancer diagnosis was a while ago but I chose to keep it private until after finding out my surgery was successful and what my other treatments would be.”

In a public Facebook post, Hoover said a geneticist told her that her cancer was likely linked to environmental and lifestyle factors, including “a lack of exercise, poor diet and stress”. (In 2016, Australian researchers found chronic stress accelerates the spread of cancer. Cancer Council NSW says the vast majority of preventable cancers are caused by common, avoidable lifestyle factors, with Cancer Council Victoria saying up to 5 per cent of certain cancers are due to an inherited faulty gene.)

Hoover has had an eventful five years.

Though the 46-year-old Texan had been writing since November 2011, the rise of #BookTok during COVID-19 resulted in sales of romance novels doubling. As a result, Hoover’s 2016 novel It Ends with Us flew to No.1 on the New York Times Best Seller list in January 2022, and principal photography of the film adaptation, which Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios had optioned in 2019, began in May 2023.

In December 2024, four months after the release of the It Ends with Us film, Lively filed a sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni and others associated with Wayfarer Studios.

Lively also accused Baldoni of orchestrating a smear campaign to “destroy” her reputation. Baldoni denies all claims and filed a since-dismissed $US400 million ($596 million) countersuit against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and her publicist, citing defamation, invasion of privacy and civil extortion.

A trial date for Lively’s case against Baldoni has been rescheduled to May. Hoover served as an executive producer on the film and was on set for a few days but told Elle she was “completely unaware that anything was happening”.

Nevertheless, by October Hoover was deposed in relation to the matter and says she and her mother now feel “PTSD” thinking about the novel. Its storyline – florist Lily Bloom (Lively) ending a familial cycle of abuse – was inspired by Hoover’s mother.

“I feel awful because I almost feel like [Hoover’s mother has] gone through more with the aftermath of this film, more pain than she went through with my dad, just seeing the ugliness of it,” Hoover told Elle.

“I can’t even recommend it any more. I feel like [the lawsuit] has overshadowed it … I’m almost embarrassed to say I wrote it.”

Hoover, pictured here at a Regretting You fan screening in September, skyrocketed to household-name status in 2022 when #BookTok helped It Ends with Us shoot to No.1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Is Woman Down based on the It Ends with Us legal saga?

At the time she was writing the new novel, three others by Hoover were being adapted into films. Regretting You, released last October; Reminders of Him, due in March; and Verity, slated for this October.

Hoover’s most recent disclaimer came shortly after her January cancer update, coinciding with Woman Down’s release, in which she said her health news “wasn’t a ploy to get sympathy-sales for release day”.

But it wasn’t the first she’s had to issue about the novel, in which “frustrated author” Petra Rose checks into a remote cabin to finish her next book. The character, per the novel’s synopsis, had been suffering from writer’s block after “viral backlash over her latest film adaptation forced Petra Rose to take a hiatus” and learns “the hard way what happens when the internet turns on you”.

Comparisons have been made with the It Ends with Us legal saga since Woman Down’s synopsis was revealed last year.

An author’s note before the first chapter, however, emphasises to readers that Woman Down was a rewrite of the short story Saint, first published several years ago. “Please, I beg of you, do not try to make ties between my personal life and this story, as there are none,” Hoover writes.

Earlier in September she told her private Facebook group: “My upcoming book Woman Down has nothing to do with the publicity surrounding previous adaptations of mine.”

The day Woman Down was announced, however, was one of many Hoover spent on the Reminders of Him set over five months of filming. It’s the first of her adaptations Hoover has co-written and co-produced.

“I am going to be difficult if another adaptation happens,” Petra Rose tells fans towards the end of Woman Down, after the character clashes with a film producer.

“I’m going to fight tooth and nail for the story the readers supported … I’d rather have adaptations I’m proud of than adaptations that don’t even resemble their original forms.”