Two striking facts about the Colleen Hoover Phenomenon. The first is that the US writer is one of the best-selling English language authors of current times, with more than 20 million books sold. The second is that you still probably haven’t heard of her, unless you are, on average, a young woman aged 15-30 who likes reading and uses TikTok – the social media platform that made Hoover famous.
Her “new” book, Too Late, is not quite new – it has been self-published in several formats over the past 10 years. But it has now been edited and revised and this is the definitive mainstream version – much-sought-after among her completist fans.
Too Late is considerably darker than some of her other books. It most resembles the 2018 Verity – a toxic take on Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca that makes the original look like a fairytale – and Hoover herself says it is “twisted” and has “screwed up characters and extremely graphic situations”.
She’s not kidding. It is not for the faint of heart. As with many of her books, chapters are told from different perspectives: we have the heroine Sloan, and hero Carter – but then there are sections from a sociopathic villain who is given equal time. Sloan is in a toxic relationship with this villain, criminal drug trafficker Asa; the way he controls her will make your flesh-crawl. Good guy Carter is an undercover agent working to bring Asa down. The complication is – you’d never guess – that Carter and Sloan fall in love.
So far, so enjoyable as a romantic thriller. But there is no getting around one issue: many of the passages told from Asa’s point of view are very uncomfortable. The sex scenes involving him are frightening and destabilising – we don’t know what his limits are. He threatens and chokes Sloan, and describes having sex with her, in detail, to another man. It is a long way from erotic.
With stories ranging from the light romance of November 9 to the domestic violence themes of It Ends with Us, Hoover’s books are very varied – surely a good thing – and they are considered to come under the category of New Adult Fiction: books aimed at the post-YA (18-30) bracket, where the heroine resembles the reader and is given a relatable setting with added adventures.
Too Late fulfils that description – it could be set in any US college town, and has minimal description (presumably so the reader can insert herself into the heroine’s role).
But while its backdrop is run-of-the-mill, the plot twists are wild and imaginative and there are some good turns of phrase in Hoover’s prose – when Sloan is forced by Asa to wear an engagement ring, she says, “I didn’t know Hell had so much sparkle”.
Too Late originally appeared online chapter by chapter, which held its own attraction for readers, and Hoover has said she found their comments very helpful. The new version has been tidied up and given a much clearer structure, and one of the most unnerving sex scenes has been removed. And even a book as dark as this one offers Hoover’s trademark tropes: funny, flirty conversations, a charming hero, and an idealised but sometimes surprising heroine. So it’s a good bet that this will be another big hit – her last book, It Starts With Us, had an initial print run of 3 million when it was published last year.
Last week on a tube train I realized that the young woman next to me was reading a different Hoover book – I asked her a few questions and it turned out that two other people in the carriage had read her too. She is truly a phenomenon. My new friend told me Hoover’s books were the first fiction she had read since leaving school, and she was now reading other authors. Perhaps that’s the worthwhile role of Hoover books, and Too Late certainly succeeds as a thriller, with its page-turning pacing, and moments where you are truly scared for the characters. I even shouted out “No!” when Carter did something particularly stupid.
The book has trigger warnings for “foul language, graphic sexual scenes, murder, sexual assault, and drug use” – a handy reminder that although it is readable and gripping, as the author herself says, it should absolutely not be on the Young Adult shelves.
Too Late by Colleen Hoover is published by Sphere, £9.99
