'It Ends with Us' was supposed to be a BookTok Hollywood success story. What went wrong?

“It Ends with Us” was supposed to be BookTok’s foray into Hollywood.

Book-to-screen adaptations are nothing new, but this one showed a new flavor of success. It showed the influence of the readers who morphed Colleen Hoover’s 2016 romance novel into a massive sleeper hit and prompted publishers to look a little more closely at what the BookTok community was loving.

Now, it hardly seems like a moment to celebrate, and some fans are saying they wish the book they'd made viral had never taken off at all.

The “It Ends with Us” movie has been marred with controversy from the start. First, some readers objected to this being the book that was being elevated to film status, saying it glamorized domestic violence. Then it was the early photos of Blake Lively’s frumpy on-set outfits. The drama surrounding the cast eclipsed all that when it came time for press – Lively and Justin Baldoni promoted the film separately and cast members dodged questions about working with the latter.

Now, a sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni has emerged, and Lively's legal team alleges he initiated a “smear campaign" to destroy her career while privately concealing abuse of his own.

“If this hot mess doesn’t prove to you that a good book should sometimes just stay a good book, I don’t know what else to tell you,” one fan said on TikTok, continuing: “It’s a shame because the book series was so good and now it’s tainted by all of this drama.”

‘It Ends with Us' was an early BookTok romance success

“It Ends with Us” is one title in a cast of novels that skyrocketed during the early days of BookTok.

The novel has almost 2 million five-star reviews on Goodreads. Videos of readers crying at the end of the book have hundreds of thousands of views. It quickly became one of BookTok’s beloved titles, up there with “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros and “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas. All three are mainstays at “As Seen on BookTok” bookstore tables.

The success prompted Hoover to publish a sequel – aptly titled “It Starts with Us” – six years after the first book’s release.

However, not all BookTok users were fans of the novel and questioned the level of praise it was getting. Some slammed Hoover’s lack of trigger warnings for a romance novel with such heavy themes of domestic violence and abuse. Others simply deemed “It Ends with Us” cringy.

A rocky road to the silver screen

Overall, the consensus from the readers who platformed “It Ends with Us” in the first place was positive – a BookTok success was making it to the big screen, and that was something to celebrate.

But not everyone was happy about the casting of Lively, 35 at the time, to play a 23-year-old character. And then came the outfits – set photos of eccentric, layered looks that many readers said didn’t do the character or Lively justice.

“Y’all ever consider that maybe the 'It Ends With Us' set looks bad because the BOOK was bad?” one video with over 700,000 likes says. “BE SO SERIOUS.”

Hoover later told the "Today" show that she was more concerned about telling the story than any backlash about wardrobe.

The drama continued to pile on – first criticism that the film’s marketing was too light-hearted for the subject matter, then between Baldoni and the rest of the cast, as Lively and Hoover promoted separately from Baldoni.

It raked in over $148,000,000 in domestic ticket sales, but not all fans felt the movie lived up to the book.

“As a book girly I’m disappointed in everything that was left out of the movie,” one video with 20,000 views reads, captioning the video: “It felt so rushed but I would still watch it again.”

Now the complaint. Lively’s lawyers claim that Baldoni previously ignored sexual consent. It includes submitted text messages from his PR team saying they can "bury anyone." Some fans took to X to share they felt like they’d been weaponized and manipulated by the negative perception of Lively after the film.

The experience has left some fans feeling wary of future BookTok adaptations, many of which are on the horizon.

“As if 'It Ends With Us' wasn’t enough,” one fan ranted on TikTok. And commenting on another video about Anne Hathaway’s casting in “Verity,” one user wrote, “pleeeeease don't kill it like they did 'It Ends With Us.' ”

Contributing: Jay Stahl, Edward Segarra, David Oliver and Pamela Avila

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, check out her recent articles, or tell her what you’re reading at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'It Ends with Us': How the BookTok success story went so wrong