Doesn’t Colleen Hoover stink /s as the usual hate comes in. (Never read her books so have no opinion of her)

It's interesting. The publishers have decided that heavy themes are needed, but the public wants fun fluff. And they are providing none of that, so they turn to romance which has it already. And those heavy themes seem to be going nowhere.

Interesting too how there is a parallel in the movie industry. They also seem to have it completely wrong as judged by the large number of box office failures recently.

Now we'll get a deluge of Colleen Hoover type books. Which isn't bad, but it will help dry up the demand quickly as it becomes derivative and oversaturated. Hopefully some good romance and other genre authors wind up finding a huge following before the deluge happens. And hopefully the industry sees that storytelling matters more than their obsession with heavy themes meant to change the world.

Good points. It makes me curious about what the "big" book clubs have been selecting (I think one of the Bush daughters has a popular one and Reese Witherspoon as well.)

There actually is a lot of cozy fiction going around, they're just not as famous as romance books, but I've seen cozy fantasy, cozy mysteries, cozy thrillers on the rise.

Colleen Hoover books aren’t even light in terms of theme. It’s just taken like a joke (for some reason) by the writer in terms of consequences.

I am pretty sure a man purposely burning down a house (with his girlfriend still in it and he was aware of this!) because he was mad at his girlfriend would result in an attempted murder charge on top of destruction of private property

Was going to mention the cozy fiction! Got a good rec for cozy thriller? Hm, is that an oxymoron?