BookTalk with Caitlin Bea

Caitlin Bea, a New York City–based content creator who started on YouTube in 2010 making beauty tutorials, discovered reading during the pandemic when she wasn't putting on makeup anymore. She dug up an old Kindle, downloaded a few books, and after two false starts, hit Verity by Colleen Hoover. The first line — "Her skull cracked" — hooked her immediately. She read Hoover's entire backlist in a binge, and that experience shaped how she now thinks about helping other people start reading: give them something entertaining, not intimidating.

Why Colleen Hoover works for new readers

Caitlin recommends Hoover as a gateway author because her books are "bingeable." The chapters are short, the endings make you turn the page, and the stories are purely entertaining — not the kind of "crazy thought-provoking work of art" that can feel like homework. The goal for a new reader, she says, is just to get off your phone and into a story. Hoover delivers that reliably. Caitlin has read 22 of Hoover's 29 books. Her personal top five: Verity (first), Hopeless (which she almost forgot about but calls a beautiful story with heavier themes), Ugly Love (the book that introduced her to spicier romance), November 9th, and Maybe Someday (for the music/songwriting element). She notes that Slammed, Hoover's first published book, shows a clear difference in writing quality — read it e