Is Colleen Hoover Retiring From Writing? Where She Stands Amid the It Ends With Us Legal Drama
After deactivating her Instagram, rumors started to swirl that It Ends With Us author Colleen Hoover is retiring from writing. The Instagram hiatus comes after Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively‘s heated legal battle after the actress accused the director for sexual harassment.
Colleen Hoover’s breakout novel It Ends With Us was released in 2016. A sequel, It Starts With Us, was subsequently released in 2022. In July 2019, Justin Baldoni optioned the novel for a film adaptation to be produced through his Wayfarer Studios. The book series skyrocketed in popularity thanks to BookTok and reached number 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list.
After the release of the movie, Lively filed legal action against Baldoni, producer Jamey Heath, and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel on December 31. The New York Times published an article titled “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine” including the allegations of sexual harrassment against the director. Hoover expressed her support for Lively in an Instagram post. Shortly after, Baldoni filed a lawsuit against the newspaper seeking $40 million in damages, and later sued Lively and Reynolds for $400 million in damages.
In Baldoni’s lawsuit against Lively, the director provided text evidence of his correspondences with Hoover. Hoover expressed in her emails that she was in favor of Baldoni directing the film adaptation of It Ends With Us and that she reccomended that he should be starring as Ryle, Lively’s love interest. Hoover later deactivated her Instagram on January 22, 2025.
Is Colleen Hoover retiring from writing?
Sources told gossip Instagram account DeuxMoi that Colleen Hoover was allegedly retiring from writing. The blind item comes after the fact that the author had deactivated her Instagram, with sources saying that it was a decision to keep her distanced from the drama. However, Simon & Schuster UK has acquired two standalone novels by Colleen Hoover, supposedly to be published in 2024 and 2026.
Colleen Hoover previously expressed some regret after not being able to write in 2024 “In the last maybe year and a half, closing in on two years, I haven’t written at all and I feel a lot of guilt for that,” she told People. “But I’ve also been extremely busy, and my mind has been in other places.” She also added that becoming empty nesters has also influenced her habits, saying, “A lot of stuff has just happened in my life where writing has kind of gone on the back burner for a while.
The BookTok author opened up about the struggles of a writing in a dry spell. “Sometimes, there’ve been other times, I’ve gone six months or more without being able to write anything, and I get just so into my own head and depressed, but then it always comes,” she says. “And so I just try to remember that it’s been working so far for this long. You’re not done. It’ll come. Your brain’s busy right now.”
Despite the setbacks, she’ll always say that writing is her first love. “I need to write; it’s my therapy. I just haven’t had that moment where I sit down and get the book started enough to where I become obsessed with it and finish it,” she explained to the site. “How writing goes for me… I have to feel that need to write and forego sleep and eating and speaking to anyone and just get this book out. And sadly, I haven’t had time for that to happen. So I’m hopeful that it’s coming.”
