Colleen Hoover’s movie adaptation of her hit novel “It Ends with Us” is now climbing up the charts on Warner Bros. streaming service Max. The film, already a hit at the theaters, is clearly here to stay. Despite its overwhelming increase in views, though, it has continued to stir fire in both the literature and film communities. Domestic violence survivors and activists argued that the marketing campaign was incredibly inappropriate. Blake Lively, who played the film’s protagonist Lily, told audiences, “Wear your florals!” to come see the film adaptation.

“Wear your florals!” and your bruise makeup, apparently. It is incomprehensible why Lively would choose to take on such a role if she wasn’t going to take it seriously. While the goal here isn’t to put down women in order to uplift men, Justin Baldoni, who plays Ryle, Lily’s domestically abusive husband, took a decidedly different approach to promoting the film. In an interview at the film’s premiere, Baldoni said, “This night is for all of the women this movie was made for.”

While Baldoni’s sentiment about this movie fits the theme of empowering survivors in abusive situations, Lively had the audacity to state in an interview with Deadline that this movie isn’t about domestic violence. The book and film adaptation are named after the idea of stopping the cycle of abuse, and it isn’t about domestic violence? The difference between the view of a film about ending cycles of abuse from Baldoni and a frilly, cozy-up movie from Lively is astounding.

Hoover has maintained her usual loud silence when it comes to controversy. However, Hoover hasn’t avoided criticism entirely. While “It Ends with Us” is entirely mediocre in its representation of abuse, prior to the film’s release, she went on to partner with the company “Olive & June” to make a nail polish set inspired by her subpar novel, one of the colors even being titled “Brave Blush.”

Now, I may not have a clue as to what goes on during the process of making and publicizing a product like this, but imagine my surprise over the fact that the next color wasn’t “smokey (black) eye.” The protagonist in this movie is quite literally raped and shoved down the stairs by her husband. Was nail polish really the best option to promote this?

“It Ends with Us” claims to be a romance movie that also tackles domestic violence, but it feels like it is anything but. In a 2023 “Today Show” interview, Hoover says the book is so popular because “people resonate with it. It’s kind of a sad subject people resonate with.” Kind of sad? Is it kind of sad that an estimated 47,000 people a year are murdered by an intimate partner or family member? Give me a break, please.

So here we are again in the weird case of the mishandling of abuse and trauma, except now it has made it both to the cinema and the streaming charts with an even larger audience. “It Ends with Us” is no feel-good for-the-whole-family film. It is so incredibly tragic, and it seems that neither Lively nor Hoover can properly handle it.

Instead of continuing to platform people who do not take issues like domestic violence seriously, we should turn the focus to those who treat the subject as precarious as it is. 

Stephanie Land, author of “Maid,” created the character of Alex based on her own real experiences. Land has not once tried to defend the actions of the emotionally abusive husband in the franchise and instead highlights how serious emotional abuse is. When she was asked a question similar to Hoover’s about why people felt drawn to her story, she responded, “I tried to kind of give them a gut punch on how the safety net programs and the government assistance programs and that what we think of as welfare is actually a system that works against you.”

I can only hope that the backlash for this movie and its marketing encourages Hoover to do better as she continues down her path of fame. However, this not being her first time in hot water, one can only assume it will be a short time before this happens again.