Colleen Hoover never imagined her bestselling novel would end up here — pinned beneath a Hollywood cage match starring Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and a stack of dueling lawsuits big enough to blot out the book entirely.
What began as a deeply personal story inspired by Hoover’s own mother’s escape from abuse has curdled into a tabloid-grade legal war, one so toxic the 45-year-old author now says she can’t even bring herself to recommend It Ends with Us anymore.
The trouble started after the 2024 film adaptation hit theaters. Instead of basking in the glow of a blockbuster romance, Lively sued her co-star and the film’s director, accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment and waging a behind-the-scenes campaign to wreck her reputation. Baldoni fired back with a countersuit, dragging both Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds into the fray and accusing the couple of trying to annihilate his career.
Suddenly Hoover — who served as an executive producer — was no longer celebrating a movie release. She was being subpoenaed.
Speaking to Elle just weeks before her deposition, in an interview released Thursday, Hoover didn’t bother sugarcoating what it’s been like to watch her most personal book be swallowed by Hollywood carnage.
“It feels like a circus,” she said. “When there are real people involved, with real feelings and emotions. This actually truly has impacted some of the actors’ careers in huge ways. And I just find it all around sad.”
What stings most is how far the saga strays from what inspired the book. It Ends with Us was born from her mother’s real experience with domestic violence — a legacy Hoover says now feels tainted.
“It now gives us PTSD to think about it,” she admitted. “I almost feel like she’s gone through more with the aftermath of this film… just seeing the ugliness of it.”
“It’s overshadowed everything,” Hoover added. “I’m almost embarrassed to say I wrote it. When people ask what I do, I’m just like, ‘I’m a writer. Please don’t ask me what I wrote.’”
Baldoni’s countersuit was tossed earlier this month after he missed a filing deadline. Lively’s lawsuit — a 160-million-dollar heavyweight — is still alive and scheduled for trial in March 2026.
But behind the scenes, Hoover has already made her loyalties clear. In December, she publicly thanked Lively on Instagram, calling her “honest, kind, supportive and patient.” And in private text messages submitted to the court by Baldoni’s lawyers, Hoover allegedly told him she “felt forced to choose” sides and begged both camps to stop turning the film’s fallout into a public brawl.
“The back and forth articles from both camps is just so upsetting and ridiculous,” she wrote. “It’s making everyone working on this movie look immature… Please don’t continue to use [your platform] to harm me or mine.”
Hoover says time has blunted some of the sting — “The more time that passes, the easier everything gets for all of us” — but the pride she once felt is harder to resurrect.
“I was very proud of that book,” she said. “And I’m still proud of it, but less publicly so. Maybe I need therapy, I don’t know.”
For now, It Ends with Us lives on — a love story engulfed by a legal saga no one saw coming, least of all the woman who wrote it.
