Colleen Hoover is one of those authors who can genuinely claim to have taken over an entire generation of readers. A former social work student from Texas who self-published her first novel, Slammed, in 2012, she has since become one of the most recognizable names in contemporary romance books and beyond.

What makes Colleen Hoover books so addictive is a combination of:

• relatable, imperfect characters;
• emotionally raw storylines that don’t flinch from difficult subjects;
• first-person narration that puts you directly inside a character’s head;
• romance that feels earned rather than convenient.

Her books cross genres effortlessly — It Ends with Us is simultaneously a love story and a serious exploration of domestic abuse; Verity is a full-blown psychological thriller. She writes women’s fiction that refuses to stay in any single lane.

The authors below all share some version of what makes Hoover so compelling. So, they definitely belong on the reading list of anyone who loves what CoHo does and wants more of it.

Jodi Picoult

Author Jodi Picoult has been doing emotionally devastating fiction since before BookTok existed, and her reputation is fully earned. She writes what is often called “issue fiction.” Her novels are built around a central ethical or social dilemma told from multiple perspectives. Her books cover topics including wrongful conviction, autism, racial identity, organ donation, and school shootings. She has published over thirty novels, with My Sister’s Keeper, Small Great Things, and Wish You Were Here among her most beloved.

What connects her to Hoover is the emotional ferocity of her storytelling and her commitment to women’s fiction that takes women’s experiences seriously and without apology. Where Hoover often centers on romantic love as the catalyst for her characters’ growth, Picoult centers on family, justice, and moral complexity.

Emily Henry

Previously mentioned author Jodi Picoult called Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation a “gorgeous slow-burn romance.” Emily Henry is frequently described as the reigning queen of contemporary romance, and the description is fair. Her novels, including Beach Read, People We Meet on Vacation, Book Lovers, Happy Place, and Funny Story, are sharp, witty, and deeply felt. They combine sparkling romantic tension with genuine emotional substance.

The comparison to Hoover is obvious on the surface because both write character-driven romance with a modern voice. What makes Henry distinctive is her literary self-awareness. Her characters are often writers, readers, or people with complicated relationships to storytelling itself. Her books are full of the kind of meta-literary wit that rewards readers who love fiction as much as they love romance. Colleen Hoover herself has named Henry as one of her favorite authors.

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a bestselling author whose novels often feature protagonists who have achieved fame in such fields as film, music, and sports. She has nine #1 New York Times bestselling novels, including The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones & The Six, Malibu Rising , and Carrie Soto Is Back. Her signature move is using innovative narrative structures (oral history interviews, interwoven timelines, ensemble casts) to tell stories that feel bigger than a single relationship.

What connects Reid to Hoover is the emotional wallop her books deliver, and her particular talent for writing characters who feel genuinely, messily human. One of the most compelling things about Reid’s writing is how she creates deeply imperfect characters, yet still makes readers genuinely care about and support them.

Christina Lauren

Christina Lauren’s books are the work of the writing duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings. Two friends met through fan fiction and built one of the most prolific and beloved partnerships in contemporary romance. Their catalog spans over twenty novels that you can add to your list to read. The Unhoneymooners, Beautiful Bastard, In a Holidaze, and The Soulmate Equation are among their most popular titles.

What connects their style to Hoover’s is how easy it is to emotionally step into the story, along with that strong focus on romance. When you read Christina Lauren, you quickly get attached to the couple at the heart of the book, and their ending feels natural and well-deserved, not forced. Their humor is also much more consistent, which sets them apart from Hoover a bit and makes their books a great pick if you loved It Starts with Us.

Mia Sheridan

Mia Sheridan is a New York Times bestselling author who specializes in exactly the kind of emotionally intense, slow-burn romance that Colleen Hoover readers tend to devour. Her most famous novel, Archer’s Voice, follows Bree Prescott, a woman fleeing trauma who arrives in a small Maine town and finds an unexpected connection with Archer Hale — a mute man who lives in isolation.

Sheridan’s entire catalog is built on the premise that love, at its most meaningful, is inseparable from healing. The people who find each other in her books do so because they need each other in a way that goes beyond attraction or compatibility. If you loved It Ends with Us for the emotional depth underneath the romance, Archer’s Voice and Sheridan’s other novels — Most of All You, Leo, Becoming Calder — will feel familiar.

Ali Hazelwood

Ali Hazelwood arrived in the romance world in 2021 with The Love Hypothesis and immediately became one of the most talked-about authors in the genre. A neuroscientist by training, she writes STEM romance. Her love stories are set in academic and scientific environments, with heroines who are PhD students, researchers, and professors navigating the intersection of their professional ambitions and their personal lives.

What makes Hazelwood a natural recommendation for Hoover readers is her ability to write characters whose intelligence and professional lives are as much a part of who they are as their romantic feelings. Her books are lighter in emotional register than Hoover’s most intense work, but they still make you care deeply about the outcome.

E. Lockhart

E. Lockhart is the author of one of the most genuinely surprising Young Adult novels of the last decade. We Were Liars won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best YA Fiction and has never really left the conversation since. The novel follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman, a teenager from an old-money New England family who summers every year on her grandfather’s private island with her cousins and their friend Gat. Then a mysterious accident leaves her with no memory of what happened the summer she was fifteen, and a mission to piece the truth together.

What links it to Hoover is the raw emotional intensity and the deeply personal, first-person perspective that you can’t fully trust. Lockhart’s style feels more lyrical and broken up, but like Hoover, she knows how to hold back just enough to make the final reveal hit harder. If you were drawn to Verity for its psychological depth and that kind of ending that flips the whole story, We Were Liars is a perfect follow-up.

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What all seven of these authors share with Colleen Hoover is a commitment to the emotional truth of their characters and a refusal to let the romance be the only thing happening in the story. If you’ve loved Colleen Hoover books and want to expand your reading life without losing what makes those books work, this list is your starting point.