Colleen Hoover’s controversial best-selling novel ‘Breaking the Circle’ hits theaters: Does it really romanticize sexual violence?

‘Breaking the Circle’, the best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover, hits Spanish screens this Friday

Searching for its title on the internet gives a more than rounded search that speaks of ‘a TikTok phenomenon’. The social network of short videos and trends associated with dance has formed its own literary universe, called BookTok (a play on words between the term ‘book’ in English and the nomenclature of the application), in which the most coveted novels of the season receive the democratic treatment of the viral.

Breaking the Circle is one of several titles by writer Colleen Hoover (Sulphur Springs, Texas, United States) that have made it onto the best-seller lists in and outside of her country. This one has also managed to get an adaptation to the big screen that hits theaters this coming Friday. Its premise is, at first glance, simple. Lily Bloom (played in the film by Blake Lively), has not had an easy life. She has grown up seeing the constant abuse of her father towards her mother, a situation that has taken its toll on her state of mind. For this reason, her idyllic relationship with the neo-surgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) seems alien to her not so idyllic family reality. Things get complicated when Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), Lily’s first love, reappears in her life.

The official synopsis insists that with the appearance of the third wheel, Ryle’s character “begins to show his true colors,” a hackneyed phrase that hides the toxic relationship between the two. In reality, Breaking the Circle was Hoover’s way of dealing with the abuse she saw in her family. Through writing, she exorcised the ghosts of the scenes she had to witness as a child.

“One of my earliest memories was him throwing a TV at my mom,” she told Today of her biological father. “We grew up in an abusive home,” she added. “There were no resources for women to get out of situations like that,” she continued. Hoover’s mother divorced her father when she was 2, so “from then on, I just remember growing up with such a strong, independent mother.” Released in 2016, the novel didn’t become a phenomenon until the rise of TikTok (between 2021 and 2022). “People ask me, ‘How did you get your books to go viral on TikTok? ’ And I say, ‘It wasn’t me. It was readers. It was bloggers, BookTokers. ’ People relied on what other readers thought,” Hoover explained.

Her personal history has inspired one of the most popular works of the last decade (the author sold more than nine million copies with all her books in 2022), but its success has brought with it countless criticisms that point to a ‘romanticization’ of the violence and abuse that are narrated in the story. Breaking the Circle (It ends with us in its original title), is classified as a romance novel, but its pages hide scenes that describe, in great detail, situations such as rape, verbal and physical abuse, as well as graphic violence.

At no point is the reader warned of the content of the writing (with the so-called trigger warnings, warnings that advance that the chapter or story to be read contains explicit episodes associated with domestic violence) and the synopsis of the story completely erases the reality of Lily’s situation, turning its colorful cover into an advertisement for a novel associated with love and idyllic relationships.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, in a scene from the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s successful novel, ‘Breaking the Circle’

The novel’s success has been accompanied by controversy, with critics and audiences alike considering that Hoover tends to glorify abuse and violence in her story (something that could be carried over to the film adaptation led by Lively). However, in the aforementioned interview with the morning television show, the author prefers to focus on how her novel has helped people who have gone through the same situation as her mother, and not so much on the critical voices that see in her story an idealization of toxic relationships.

“It’s been so heartwarming to read how much the book has helped people, and that my mother’s story has really given other women the strength to get out of their situations. It’s a wonderful thing that I’m excited to see on screen. I also hope it has the same effect that the book has had,” Hoover said of the upcoming film. Some readers have commented on social media that they won’t be going to see the film (and recommend that no one else does) claiming that the author doesn’t treat the subject matter of her novel seriously enough.

This is the case of user @melinasoooyaaa, who has created a long thread on X (formerly Twitter) explaining why she will not go to see the film after having read the novel. “The book is written in such a way that it states on several occasions that there is no such thing as good or evil (speaking of men who beat up women) because, according to its logic, we all make mistakes and a person can change,” she says, while mentioning one of the phrases that appear in the work. “There are no such things as bad people, we are just people who, sometimes, do bad things.”

A thread from a X user (formerly Twitter) explaining why she won’t go to see ‘Breaking the Circle’ after reading Hoover’s novel