Ugly Love

by Colleen Hoover

 
From Colleen Hoover, the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us, a heart-wrenching love story that proves attraction at first sight can be messy.

When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she doesn't think it's love at first sight. They wouldn’t even go so far as to consider themselves friends. The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. Once their desires are out in the open, they realise they have the perfect set-up. He doesn’t want love, she doesn’t have time for love, so that just leaves the sex. Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her.

Never ask about the past.
Don’t expect a future.

They think they can handle it, but realise almost immediately they can’t handle it at all.

Hearts get infiltrated.
Promises get broken.
Rules get shattered.
Love gets ugly.
 

• ISBN10: 1471136728
• ISBN13: 9781471136726
• Publish Date: 5 August 2014
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Edition: UK ed.
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leigha]

Two busy, emotionally stunted individuals decide to have sex in this disappointing new adult romance.

Several years ago, I went through a New Adult reading binge. While I picked up Ugly Love during this time, I never read it until now. To be completely honest, I didn't quite finish reading it now. I skimmed the book around the 85% mark just so I could claim it done. And, oh boy, I was so glad to be done with it.

I hated this novel. The relationship between Miles and Tate is incredibly shallow. In generally, Tate is a character without a lot of depth. She is meant only to help Miles grow as a person. Lots of details are given about her - her career, her family, her education - and yet none of those details gave her much personality. The entire book revolves around Miles' personality and character development. I need both people in the relationship to be well-developed in order to enjoy the romance.

Let's talk about trauma. This book is built around overcoming Miles' trauma. Traumatic events are not necessarily a bad catalyst for great character moments, but I'm so incredibly tired of it as a device in this genre. Not every young adult needs a traumatic back story!!!

tl;dr An unbalanced love story focused on one man's trauma.

[Laurie]

The sex was way too much and too explicit for my taste.

[lauriesbookshelf]

The sex was way too much and too explicit for my taste.

[leelu92]

Ummmm. I'm in the minority on this one, I guess. I liked it and I'm glad I read it b/c I've been curious about this book for quite a while. I just wasn't crazy about it. Miles and Tate were difficult for me to connect with at times. *shrugs* ... I think I hoped for more.

[cornerfolds]

Something you might already know about me is I don't review many contemporary romances. If I do, they're always going to be adult or new adult romances - I just can't handle YA romance with no fantastical elements! Even so, these reviews are few and far between. New adult romance, in particular, has a certain characteristic that seems to apply to almost all of them. They all have a ridiculous amount of unnecessary angst and drama. I mean, I get why, so maybe it isn't entirely unnecessary, but it's at least unbelievable. What I'm trying to say is, Ugly Love was a little out of my comfort zone. Seeing it all over Instagram for months finally broke me, though, and I gave it a try. And then I had to sit on it for awhile to decide how I really felt.

Ugly Love is pretty much your typical NA romance. Girl meets boy, girl has tons of drama, boy has tons of drama, they fall in love, they can't be in love, but they are anyway, etc. In this way it was totally predictable and unsurprising.

Tate and Miles are the main characters of this angsty romance. Miles is an airline pilot with a dark past that makes him extremely undatable. Tate's life is significantly less dramatic. She's mostly just really busy with school and work and doesn't seem to have the time to make a relationship work. But these two meet and sparks fly all over the place. What's a couple to do? As you probably gathered from the synopsis, they work out a deal that involves physical feels only - no hearts allowed! And, as you probably gathered from the synopsis, this doesn't quite work out.

Tate is an alright gal. I liked her for the most part although there were several moments when I wanted to knock some sense into her. Miles, on the other hand, I really couldn't get down with. I'll never understand what it is with book characters who think they have the right to treat everyone around them like crap just because they have a rocky past. It's really not okay. And this is where the book lost me.

Similarly to Beautiful Disaster and Obsidian, Ugly Love's main man is a total jerk to the female love interest of the story. And for the same reason I couldn't stand those two books, I really had a huge problem with Miles. Not only was he an ass to Tate on a regular basis, but his "deep dark secret" wasn't believable as something that would make him swear off women forever. At least in my opinion... There was some character growth by the end. Miles does finally let go of the chip on his shoulder, but really Tate never should have stuck around as long as she did.

The writing was also really weird in this book. Granted, I did listen to the audiobook. But I did go pick up a physical copy just to see. Colleen Hoover attempts to do some kind of weird (really freaking weird) poetry thing with Miles' flashbacks and it just really doesn't work at all.

In summary, the premise of the story was a little unbelievable to me, the male lead was behaved like a jerk for the majority of the book, and the writing was really strange. I didn't completely hate it because I did enjoy Tate the secondary characters in the book, but I really don't see what all the fuss was about with this one. I might go see the movie just to see if they do it any better in that medium, but I'll probably wait for some reviews first.


Notes on the Audiobook
I did enjoy Grace Grant and Deacon Lee as narrators and would certainly listen to something else by them!

[Sam@WLABB]

What can I say: I loved it! The story was good, but I think I enjoyed Hoover's style the most. I adored how the chapters alternated between the Tate in the present and Miles in the past. Every time I thought I knew what had destroyed Miles, I would get another piece of the puzzle and find out I was wrong. And when I finally found out what BIG event changed Miles forever, I can honestly say -- I did not see that coming. I must admit, I adored Miles' chapters. He was so deep and sensitive an the way he emoted, GAH!!! Those chapters allowed me to forgive some of his crimes against Tate. And Tate, she had the patience of Job, I swear! Together, they were super hot and sexy, but also so sad and damaged, but hopeful. A lot of feels, a lot of feels. I have to say, I did not ugly cry, it was sad, I was sad, but I did not ugly cry. However, I did smile, laugh, swoon, rage and hope. What a great book. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Hoover's work.

[Bianca]

Love isn't always pretty, Tate. Sometimes you spend all your time hoping it'll eventually be something different. Something better. Then, before you know it, you're back to square one, and you lost your heart somewhere along the way.

[Berls]

This review appeared first at Fantasy is More Fun.

4.5 stars

**This book may be unsuitable for people under 17 years of age due to its use of sexual content, drug and alcohol use, and/or violence.**

I've been meaning to read Colleen Hoover for quite a while, but when I started reading reviews for Ugly Love I knew. Knew that this was the one I couldn't resist. The title appealed to me, promising a book that would break my heart. And what more can you want from a book right? Yes, I am a masochist when it comes to my books.

Well it totally shattered my heart, but not at all in the way I expected. I mean, there was the obvious pain, but the real shattering moment was almost too much. I had been reading Ugly Love all day, non-stop. It was soooo good. But at that moment I stopped (until the next day), because I couldn't take it. I hadn't seen it coming and it destroyed me. I couldn't cry at first, because of shock - and then I cried the ugliest tears I think a book has ever produced in me. It was rough.

Ugly Love will make you feel - but not just sadness. I laughed my ass off early on in the book. I smiled with joy and my heart was warmed. It was the full range of emotions - the good, the bad, and yeah - the ugly.

The characters are really well written - how else could I feel so much, right? The way Colleen Hoover alternates between points of view and time frames is executed beautifully and really connects things in unexpected ways.

I have two minor complaints - and they're interconnected. In the bits that take place 6 years in the past, we get a fairly healthy dose of teenage angst, spurred on my some seriously bad - self-involved, blind - parenting. I can handle both of these things to an extent, but there was a bit more than I like and I didn't feel it really was necessary. It wasn't head enough to make me dislike Ugly Love, but its worth noting and docking half a star.

Beautifully written, Ugly Love won me over immediately as a fan of Colleen Hoover. If you feel like an emotional book, look no further! And, as a bonus, I've recently discovered that Ugly Love is being made into a movie! Score! Let's hope they don't mess it up!

[Linda]

When I read Ugly Love myself, I loved it SO much, and I cried so many ugly tears it's not even funny. I enjoyed the audiobook, too, but some things I hadn't really noticed when I read it stood out when I listened to it.

Full review soon.

This and all my other reviews are originally posted on my blog (un)Conventional Bookviews

[lizarodz]

More like 4.5 stars.

Given my track record with Coleen Hoover’s books, I was expecting to enjoy Ugly Love more than I did. It’s not that I didn’t like it, not at all, but some things in the book bothered me and didn’t allow me to give it the five stared reviewed that I wished for.

To start with, the story is told from the first person by both current-day Tate and 18-year-old Miles. So we are constantly going from the present to the past. The present story is one of an unfeeling Miles that falls in lust with Tate. It just made me wonder what could have happened to make such a joyous, positive, loving and funny Miles turned into such a different person. I kept wishing I could speed the audiobook to the ending, just so I could figure him out.

Tate temporally moves to her brother’s apartment, while she finds a new job and goes to graduate school. Miles is a fellow pilot and lives right across the hall from them. They are attracted to each other and they agree to have a purely physical relationship. Here is where I couldn’t figure out why Tate would agree to such a thing. It was obvious from the beginning that she wasn’t confident that she could keep their “relationship” only physical without any feelings being involved (see the statement below.) I know that Tate knows what she’s doing, but it just rubbed be the wrong way that she kept putting up with Miles. Other than that, I really liked Tate.

“I’m terrified to lose him for good, so I sell myself short and take what I can from him, even though I know I deserve better.”

Miles was a conundrum to me. While I understand why he became so hardened, it was just inexcusable to me the way that he kept treating Tate. He’s successful, handsome, a good friend, BUT he’s also rude, closed up, unbending, and sometimes even cruel. I’m not sure what would happen to me if I were on his shoes, but I would like to believe that it wouldn’t take me that long to get over it.

“Love isn’t always pretty. Sometimes you spend all your time hoping it’ll eventually be something different. Something better. Then, before you know it, you’re back to square one, and you lost your heart somewhere along the way.”

Rachel is Miles girlfriend when he was younger and part of the reason of his self-induced pain, but a lot of it Miles creating himself by now facing what happened. I love Cap! He was such a wise old man and a true friend to both Miles and Tate.

“God gives us the ugliness so we don’t take the beautiful things in life for granted.”

Hoover’s writing is flawless. It’s always a thing of beauty, full of simile, insight, intensity, and felling. The story is contemporary and the plot itself is masterfully executed to keep the reader at the edge of his/her seat trying to figure out what on earth happened to Miles and what will happen to Tate and Miles. Another thing is there is hardly any dialogue in the book. Miles is brooding and closed off and it felt like Tate had to force him to speak. I mean, they don’t even text each other! It is hard to know someone when you don’t talk. I loved the end of the story, where we get a chapter from present Miles POV.

Overall, Ugly Love is a must read for Hoover’s fans (and I’m rapidly becoming one), a powerful read of the ugly and the beautiful parts of love.

About the audiobook – A really good one. I enjoyed both Grace Grant and Deacon Lee’s performances. The voices were distinctive from each other, and the feelings where easy to discern.