Woman on the Verge
Colleen Hoover has said that her new novel is not about her life, but the parallels are there. Her fans were vocally irate over the 2024 adaptation of her novel It Ends with Us, and the movie has had a tainted afterlife due to the ongoing legal battle between stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Woman Down, meanwhile, is “a first-class thrill ride,” per our review, that kicks off when a bestselling romance novelist “suffers a crisis of confidence after a movie adaptation of one of her books generates anger among her readers.” It’s the #1 book in the country.
Strange Love
Belle Burden’s buzzy memoir, Strangers, lands at #9 on our hardcover nonfiction list. It tracks “the exhilarating start and excruciating dissolution” of her marriage, according to our review. “Dividing the narrative into five acts, Burden recounts how, during the Covid pandemic, her husband of 20 years abruptly walked out on her and their three children without explanation.” In 2023, after the divorce was finalized, Burden published a “Modern Love” essay in the New York Times, “breaking an emotional dam within her and allowing her to finally move on from her recursive cycle of self-blame,” our review notes. “With unsparing emotional clarity, Burden examines the often baffling ways relationships can fall apart.”
Taking Her Shot
It’s hockey season—in the real world, in the streaming space, and on bookshelves. As Heated Rivalry, a Canadian import streaming on HBO Max, continues to propel sales of Game Changers, Rachel Reid’s m/m sports romance series, two more books in Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus series get the collector’s edition treatment. This week, after the 2025 reissue of book one, The Deal, books two and three, The Mistake and The Score, land at #13 and #14 on our hardcover fiction list. Unlike Game Changers, the pairings in the Off Campus series are m/f. But like Reid’s series, Kennedy’s is headed for screens: Prime Video plans to launch season one of Off Campus later this year.
Blossoming Sales
A high-profile adaptation of Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, opens February 13. Among the new iterations of Emily Brontë’s novel is the latest Puffin in Bloom edition, which debuts at #8 on our children’s fiction list. Anna Bond, cofounder, chief creative officer, and CEO of Rifle Paper Co., has been illustrating covers for the classics line since it launched in 2014. The bestselling installment to date, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, has sold 244K print copies.
