Colleen Hoover’s novel ‘Woman Down’ is a contrived, cynical reflection on cancel culture Colleen Hoover’s new novel ‘Woman Down’ is contrived and corny

Booksology January 24, 2026 Blog

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This review contains spoilers.

In the book world, Colleen Hoover’s about as polarizing as an author can get. Some readers laud her as a literary powerhouse, a mainstay of the romance genre. Others consider her books — and her smarmy, often morally grey characters — altogether unbearable.

I consistently find myself in the latter camp. In fact, I vowed years ago to never spend money on a CoHo novel again after an utterly underwhelming experience reading her bestselling 2016 novel “It Ends With Us.”

But Hoover has returned after a roughly three-year hiatus (and a Hollywood scandal) with “Woman Down.” Despite my reservations about her previous books, this so-called “twisty thriller” felt like too enticing of a read to pass up.

Released on Jan. 13, the novel follows renowned author Petra Rose. After her controversial book-to-movie adaptation sparks a viral online hate train against her, Rose retreats to a remote lakeside cabin, desperate to write the next best romantic suspense novel and return to her rightful place at the top of the charts.

Rose’s issue? She seems fundamentally unable to write about anything she hasn’t experienced herself. Her half-baked novel is about a woman having a torrid affair with a married police officer, and she just can’t get in the minds of the characters. Naturally, she then heads to Facebook to livestream her complaints to thousands of her fans.

The very next day, a mysterious married police officer named Saint shows up at Rose’s cabin to inquire about a nearby crime scene. Intrigued, he offers to help her with her “research.” As expected, a torrid affair ensues.

The novel is written in the straightforward, no-frills style that characterizes much of Hoover’s work. There’s pitifully little descriptive imagery, and the reader is often told outright about the nuances of the plot rather than left to come to conclusions themselves. It makes the novel a remarkably easy read, but also remarkably predictable. At times, it almost feels mind-numbing.

Saint and Rose are also endlessly frustrating to read about. Saint continuously crosses Rose’s boundaries over the course of the novel: He stands outside her window to watch her sleep, drives hours to brood outside her daughter’s birthday party and even breaks into her home to pretend to kidnap her.

Time after time, Rose forgives him. She continues to write off his behavior as part of their elaborate shared fantasy, even as the lines between roleplay and reality (with hints of responsible adult decisionmaking) blur.

In these moments, the book feels more like a toxic mafia-boss boyfriend daydream than a high-brow thriller. And given Rose is a married mother in her mid-thirties, it’s hard to expend much sympathy towards a situation she’s burrowing herself deeper into.

I’ll be honest: It’s also difficult to review this novel without confronting the sheer similarities between Rose and Hoover.

Like Rose, Hoover is a prolific romance novelist. Like Rose, Hoover was a key player in a controversial book-to-movie adaptation. Like Rose, Hoover faced widespread criticism that pushed her offline and into writing her next book.

Though she prefaces the novel by reminding the reader that Rose’s journey is not a reflection of her own, “Woman Down” feels like farcical fanfiction Hoover wrote about herself. It’s a condemnation of cancel culture, an exposé on the insanity of TikTok detectives and a plea for the reader to give more grace to downtrodden public figures.

If this was her intent, “Woman Down” could’ve been a Notes app screenshot posted to her Instagram or a tell-all podcast episode on “Call Her Daddy.”

As a novel, however, it falls flat — and reminds me why I swore off CoHo all those years ago.

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