Does Colleen Hoover Write Romance?

Real Romance Readers vs. readers of romance.

When does one become a Real Romance Reader, and not just a reader of romance?

Two recent incidents prompted this question.

The first was an episode recording about The Flame and The Flower this weekend, which I’ll get to shortly, and the second was a phrase that popped out to me when reading a chapter by Janice Radway¹ this morning:

Actual reception studies varied in their orientation, but I think it’s fair to say that many of them, including my own Reading the Romance, claimed to be displacing textual criticism as the essence of disciplinary practice in favor of the elucidation and analysis of the readings of texts and genres made by so-called real readers. (emphasis mine)

Radway, in this context, is thinking through “Reception Studies” and asking questions about what it means to study how texts are received by readers, and is explaining how it was a somewhat radical idea in the 1980s to consider or, hell, privilege textual interpretations by the “real” consumers vs. by “professional, trained literary critics.”

When she says “so-called real readers,” she calls attention to the idea that a “real,” or “true” reader exists or could be defined adequately.

Not a real reader. Photo by Josh Rakower on Unsplash

What is a good faith reader?

Certainly we can understand there is difference between someone approaching a text in good faith and one who approaches it cynically.

For example, I think a good faith reader is one who is open to the experience, and who is willing to allow the text to transport them, should the text rise to the occasion.

By contrast, a cynical reading can result from a reader who resists the call of the text and snuffs the life out of it via an analytical autopsy. When it comes to genre, especially a genre like popular romance fiction, I’ve observed that trained “literary” critics brandish specific criteria for “quality” that were never meant to be applied to the genre of popular romance fiction. It’s like measuring how good a meal is with a yardstick: it’s the wrong tool for the job.

Does Colleen Hoover write romance?

I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t think the majority of Colleen Hoover’s books are romance novels.

But what does my opinion matter, or any “evidence” matter, when Amazon lists her books in the “romance” best sellers?

What does my opinion, or the opinion of any other “real” romance reader (obviously I consider myself one) matter when all those people who write Scary Mommy articles, or New York Times trend pieces, or what have you, are reinforcing for all those people out there (aka the unwashed MASSES) that Colleen Hoover writes romance novels?

Here’s where I must admit, shamedly…I’ve never read a Colleen Hoover novel.

I’m aware of the staggering hypocrisy, here — my absolute confidence that I can tell you what genre Colleen Hoover writes — or at least which one she doesn’t write — without having read one page of her writing.

I am actually curious to read one of her books, and I found one in a Little Free Library on my morning walk, so. I’m very committed.

I have a hypothesis about what I’ll find when I do actually become a person who has read Colleen Hoover that will explain how real romance readers and people who write Scary Mommy posts differ in their understanding of what genre CoHo writes in.

What did Real Romance Readers think of The Flame and the Flower?

Back to the other inspiration for this post:

I was talking to Hannah Hearts Romance and Leigh Kramer this past weekend about The Flame and the Flower, the 1972 novel by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss that kicked off the erotic historical romance bodice ripper, and possibly, a major influence on setting the mold for the modern romance novel according to Real Romance Readers.

Leigh and Hannah read the book alongside their friends, Vicky and Charlotte, in a Romance History Reading Project where they’re buddy reading books from a Bookriot article in an effort to explore influential romance novels, particularly older ones, that they’ve yet to read.

Leigh and Hannah, who hadn’t read much “older” romance prior to this…didn’t like this book. They had words.

In our discussion (I’ll save the details for the episode, which you can hear soon²), we ended up talking about how bestsellers like The Flame and the Flower end up being read and enjoyed by many people who aren’t the usual readers of similar texts (I’m going to shorten as TFatF from now on).

Were we being unfair in judging it against romance novel criteria?

I’m thinking now that as Real Romance Readers, we have been trained to expect certain conventions based on our experience with the genre. Was that impacting our ability to take the book at face value and engage with the text in good faith?

I speculated that maybe TFatF brought in a huge number of readers that became readers who read romance and not Real Romance Readers, and that maybe the majority of its readers had very different or very undefined genre expectations.

Did the things that bother us today as “modern” Real Romance Readers 50+ years after publication stand out in the same way to contemporary readers?

It would be very hard to nail down what “usual readers of similar texts” would mean in this context given that modern gothic romances were much more popular than “romance” at this time, and historical sexy romance as we know it was basically not a thing.

So, importantly: genre expectations were different and our 2023 Real Romance Reader definitions did not exist.

I wish I was able to pore through critical and glowing responses to the text by contemporary readers, but unfortunately they’re lost to time given every casual thought by the majority of the population wasn’t broadcasted globally on digital media platforms.

Colleen Hoover: Outselling Woodiwiss

According to Goodreads-sourced jacket copy, TFatF sold over 2.3 million copies in its first four years of publication.

The book publishing industry is very different now, but I wonder how that compares to recent “romance” bestsellers in terms of numbers.

(For context, the US population was 209 million in 1972, and is currently 340 million in 2023 — a 63% increase.)

• In the first 4 years after Fifty Shades of Grey’s publication, the trilogy sold 125 million copies worldwide — split that in 3 and you get ~42 million per book.

• Also for reference, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover sold 2.7 million print units in 2022, and all of her books sold 14.3 million print copies in 2022.³

Source: Publisher’s Weekly

OK…so bestsellers get waaaaaay more traction in today’s consolidated media empire environment, amplified by all of the digital communication channels at our disposal, such as Scary Mommy. (I’m not giving this one to TikTok, sorry.)

Colleen Hoover, romance writer, has a lot of readers. More than Kathleen E. Woodiwiss probably had over the course of her lifetime (RIP), and we talk about her constantly in Romance Discourse™.

Am I, Real Romance Reader, The Baddie?

I couldn’t help but wonder: am I the baddie who is refusing to read Colleen Hoover in good faith here?

I couldn’t help but wonder…

Could it be that readers who enjoy Colleen Hoover enjoy her books for different reasons than the ones I use to judge romance novels I enjoy reading as a Real Romance Reader?

Could it be that those readers could enjoy Colleen Hoover’s books, think of them as romance novels, and be right?

Could it be that Real Romance Readers are not the final authority on romance novels, and that our opinions should not be privileged over those of readers of romance?

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Thanks for reading!

xoyoyo,

Andrea

1. Radway, J. A. (2008). "What's the Matter with Reception Study": Some Thoughts on the Disciplinary Origins, Conceptual Constraints and Persistent Viability of a Paradigm. In Reception Study Oxford University Press.

2. …the episode will release as soon as I find the time to edit it.

3. This is likely an undercount as NPD doesn’t actually capture 100% of the print market — I’ve seen them claim they represent 85% — and this also doesn’t capture ebooks at all.