Coho has taken over Reddit and #BookTok again.
Colleen Hoover, known as Coho by fans and detractors alike, is trending on the forums because of two things. First, she has written a sequel to her best-selling romance novel It Ends With Us, unsurprisingly titled It Starts With Us, which will be in bookstores on October 18 and which her fans, called the Cohorts, are eagerly awaiting. Second, and more controversially, she has written a bonus chapter to her viral hit Verity.
Verity is a TikTok sensation of note. Because of the popularity of that book, as well as It Ends With Us, Coho’s backlist of many of her b-grade romance novels and novellas (about 24 in total), some of which were self-published before they were picked up by publishing houses, are now in the top 50 best-sellers worldwide.
They are like crack cocaine to the 50 Shades crowd. They are erotic, smutty, sometimes a little disturbing, definitely addictive, one-sitting, no-thinking-needed reads. After reading Verity, I went through about five of them in a row. I can’t tell you what the stories were actually about, just that they were fun.
Verity is a bit different to these steamy romcoms. Called a horror romance (think Gillian Flynn meets Jojo Moyes meets EL James), Verity is about a struggling writer named Lowen Ashleigh who is hired by Jeremy Crawford to take on the job of completing the remaining books in a successful series written by his wife Verity who is injured and unable to finish writing.
Lowen moves into their mansion, which is a scary horror movie-type house in the middle of nowhere in Vermont, to sort through Verity’s notes and outlines. She unearths what seems to be Verity’s autobiography.
Lowen is shocked by the blood-curdling revelations. A car accident has left Verity unable to move and speak but her presence in the house becomes more and more disturbing to Lowen. Lowen, rather than do the normal thing and get the bloody hell out of the house, stays and falls in love with Jeremy.
She does not tell him what she has learnt about what Verity has done, and things become even more deranged. Eventually Lowen finds a letter from Verity that has a different version of events to that of the manuscript.
So Cohorts became either #team manuscript or #team letter. Hoover’s bonus chapter may or may not change that. It is being released in a collector’s edition of the book, with a letter from Coho. The collection has already been nabbed in the US, but it will be released later this month in SA. US fans are not all that pleased as the new ending, rather than clear things up, makes it even more mysterious and the Cohorts are questioning what it means and why it was written. Why did Coho decide to expand on the story? Maybe it’s a foreshadowing to a sequel? Or did she write it to sell more copies of Verity?
If that is the case, it has worked as I want that collector’s edition. I will probably be reading it, listening on my ear buds to Bad Romance by Lady Gaga as per #BookTokking standards of having a soundtrack to go along with the story.
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