All 4 Colleen Hoover Movies, Ranked

This article contains a discussion of domestic abuse.

Colleen Hoover is not a good writer. Sorry if that makes you mad, but I'm right. After self-publishing books like "Slammed" starting in 2012, Hoover somehow gained national recognition — due in large part to the success to the success of, well, the trilogy she kicked off with "Slammed" — and got noticed by Atria Books, which noticed her sales were incredibly high and republished said trilogy. The rest, as they say, is history. Hoover became a mainstay of a subsection of the social media app TikTok known as "BookTok," and books like "It Ends With Us," its sequel "It Starts With Us," "Ugly Love," "November 9," "Regretting You," "Verity," and "Reminders of Him" all became legitimate best-sellers. On the one hand, people aren't reading very much anymore, so this should be a good thing. Unfortunately, Hoover's work is dull, poorly executed, and relies on genuinely absurd melodrama and irrational human behavior.

While my disdain for Hoover's work — which I don't even think is good enough to be sold at airports, honestly — is all well and good, I do think that middling-to-bad books can become legitimately fun movies. "The Housemaid" by Freida McFadden is sort of a slog, but Paul Feig's campy film adaptation is a delight, as is his similarly successful take on Darcey Bell's "A Simple Favor." So how are the Hoover adaptations? As of this writing, four movies based on Hoover's books have proven to be massive box office success stories, despite some ugly real-life drama involved with the inaugural adaptation ... and quality varies drastically. Here are all four of Colleen Hoover's movie adaptations, ranked from worst to, well, least bad.

I did not think anything could oust "It Ends With Us" from the bottom spot on this list. Then I watched "Regretting You," the 2025 Colleen Hoover adaptation directed by Josh Boone adapted from the 2019 novel of the same name. When this embarrassing, flat-out awful movie begins, we're treated to a shot of a horrifically de-aged Allison Williams and Dave Franco as high school best friends Morgan Davidson and Jonah Sullivan, who clearly have feelings for each other but are both involved with other people (Jonah is with Morgan's sister Jenny, played by Willa Fitzgerald, and Morgan reveals that she's pregnant with her boyfriend Chris Grant's child, with Chris portrayed by Scott Eastwood). Thankfully, we only have to watch a few scenes of "teenage" Williams and Franco (why did they agree to this?) before we flash forward. Chris and Morgan's daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) is now a teenager with a crush on her classmate Miller Adams (Mason Thames), and Jenny and Jonah have a bouncing baby boy named Elijah.

That's when tragedy strikes, as it almost constantly does in Hoover's stories. (The number of car accidents alone suggests that she's not capable of thinking of a different type of disaster.) Offscreen, Jenny and Chris get into a car accident, and though Morgan and Jonah are shocked and confused to learn the two were traveling together, the situation raises uncomfortable questions about Chris and Jenny's relationship, forcing Morgan and Jonah to deal with that fallout. Clara ... feels sad, smokes a joint, and applies to acting school against her mom's wishes. That's sort of it. Not only is every conversation and interaction in this movie categorically insane — the screenplay by Susan McMartin leaves a lot to be desired — nothing happens. "Regretting You?" More like I regret watching this!

I'm not going to get into the real-life drama surrounding "It Ends With Us" more than I need to, other than to say that it's extremely ugly, complex, and unsettling that the on-set dynamics were allegedly that fraught and uncomfortable. It is, unfortunately for everyone involved, somewhat ironic that there's an all-consuming drama (and legal issues) surrounding a movie that flat-out stinks. This 2024 release stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, the latter of whom also directed the film, as the insanely named Lily Blossom Bloom and Ryle Kincaid, a florist (yes, seriously) and neurosurgeon who unexpectedly meet on a rooftop and fall in love. As their seemingly perfect relationship progresses and Lily opens her own flower shop in Boston, Ryle's temper becomes evident ... and when Lily reconnects with her high school flame Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), Ryle turns possessive, jealous, and violent.

Unfortunately, any message "It Ends With Us" wants to share about surviving domestic abuse is completely overshadowed by the off-screen drama, but also thanks to the fact that the movie is poorly written, performed, and executed. (Part of Baldoni's beef is that he feels like Lively "took over" as director, but frankly, it might have been good if she did; he's not much of a visionary behind the camera.) Not only that, but the "message" — even a "perfect" relationship can become violent — is muddled by the fact that the first half of this movie is shot exactly like a romantic comedy. By the time the movie ends and Lily leaves Ryle and takes their daughter with her, you're relieved to be free of their whole situation too ... and thankfully, thanks to everything that allegedly went down between Lively and Baldoni, the "It Starts With Us" sequel adaptation is probably a non-starter.

I'll give "Reminders of Him" this. When a huge reveal surrounding a car accident that affects the entire narrative focuses on two characters splitting a low-grade weed edible — not alcohol, not hard drugs, but a substance legal in many of these United States — I laughed out loud. Vanessa Caswill's 2026 adaptation of Hoover's 2022 novel brought Hoover herself on to co-write the screenplay, though it's sort of indistinguishable from her other adaptations in that the dialogue is just as clunky and expository as ever. (Every interaction and reaction in a Colleen Hoover movie feels inexplicable, nonsensical, and insane.)

In this overwrought melodrama, Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe) wraps up a prison sentence and returns to Laramie, Wyoming to attempt to reunite with her young and bizarrely named daughter Diem (Zoe Kosovic). The problem is that Kenna was in jail after pleading guilty to vehicular manslaughter after the death of her boyfriend and father of her child Scotty Landry (Rudy Pankow), and Diem is now being raised by Scotty's parents Grace and Patrick (Lauren Graham and Bradley Whitford, both of whom deserve a better movie), who believe that Kenna is responsible for Scotty's death. In Laramie, she meets Ledger Ward (Tyriq Withers), and an attraction grows before Kenna discover that Ledger was Scotty's best friend.

"Reminders of Him" lands at second place on this list because it's not as offensively bad and stupid as "Regretting You" or "It Ends With Us," and Monroe and Withers do their level best with what they're given. The story is still dull and again, the reveal is flat-out ludicrous, but it's simply a boring and forgettable movie rather than being actively atrocious. Plus, there's a kitten in this movie! It's a really cute kitten.

"Verity" is the best Colleen Hoover movie by a country mile, and it's still ... pretty bad. I'll say this: if you thought the names in "It Ends With Us" felt absolutely crazy, you'll want to buckle the hell up for the names found within Hoover's first-ever dark thriller, which got a 2026 film adaptation directed by Michael Showalter. As the middlingly successful fiction Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) heads to an important meeting, she gets splattered with blood as a cyclist is killed; a handsome stranger literally gives her the shirt off his back to replace her blood-soaked one. When Lowen gets to the meeting, the handsome stranger is there to make a deal with her: his name is Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett), and his wife, the best-selling thriller writer Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), is too ill to finish her popular series. They want Lowen to ghostwrite the conclusion of the series under Verity's name, a job she reluctantly accepts in exchange for a huge paycheck before going to live with the Crawfords at their palatial home in Vermont. (It's really funny that characters in this story are named stuff like Verity, Lowen, and Crew ... and there's Jeremy.)

Like all of Hoover's stories, "Verity" is overwrought and absurd, and the movie only thrives whenever Hathaway is gleefully gnawing on every piece of scenery she can find. Despite being game, Hartnett and Johnson are giving nothing and are just pretty dreadful. Yes, it's the best Colleen Hoover film, but what does that even mean in a larger sense?

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.