It took about three months to write before I finished the book and began the editing process. They consumed me pretty quickly and because I didn’t have any type of publishing knowledge or experience, I didn’t think about what would happen once I finished writing their story. My days were long, and in the evenings I had the boys, so after I put them to bed I would take some “me” time and work on the book. I had three young boys and a full-time job working as an infant-nutrition specialist for WIC. I was just writing a story in my spare time.

Slammed was my first novel, but at the time, I wasn’t considering it a novel. Her newest mega best seller, It Starts With Us, picks up where 2016’s It Ends With Us (an adaptation of which is in the works from Jane the Virgin star Justin Baldoni) left off on the heels of that release, we had Hoover annotate her catalogue, offering perspective and memories on a collection of books that a growing number of fans is consuming so ravenously. Her first novel, Slammed, was self-published in 2012, but it wasn’t until 2021 that her books really started popping off worldwide, and since then her fan base, which has dubbed itself the CoHorts, has grown in both number and level of devotion. While there are “overnight success” elements to Hoover’s career arc, her popularity has been years in the making.

She is the best-selling author in America now and likely for the foreseeable future. Even if you’ve never read a Colleen Hoover book, chances are you’ve seen one - if not on a bookstore or library shelf, then perhaps on the New York Times Best-Seller List (more than half of the top-ten titles in paperback fiction bear her name) or on TikTok (where her readers regularly work themselves into an emotional frenzy).

Without merit colleen hoover characters