Oh gosh, you guys. My feelings for Ugly Love are so weird and complex! Do you ever feel like you're really starry-eyed and EVERYTHING IS AWESOOOOME, then suddenly a veil is lifted and you see all the imperfections? That happened to me while reading Ugly Love.
At first I loved Ugly Love! I got sucked into the characters, the story, and the romance. Mostly, I was addicted to Miles's back story. We know that SOMETHING bad happened with a girl named Rachel but we don't know what. We get a flashback into his past, then slowly work our way forward to figure out what happened. Man, I was hooked! I so desperately wanted to know what happened!
And holy cow, the sex in this book was... well... it was intense... and raw.
Then the veil was lifted
Somewhere around the 60-70% mark, it's like a veil was lifted. Suddenly I wasn't blissfully ignorant. All of the problem with the book were glaring at me. I literally think I recoiled a little and thought to myself, "Do I really like this?"
Miles: the mystery guy
I feel like Miles was a girl's interpretation of "mysterious". It's the kind of mysterious that's supposed to be all hot and sexy, but really it was just kind of blank.. The guy had no personality, he never smiled, he never laughed, and he refused to talk about his past. I feel like we were supposed to get off on this "mysterious" persona, but it was a little too empty for me.
Is it really attractive if a guy NEVER smiles? Is that where we're at these days?
Miles: the poet
All of Miles's flashback chapters are from his point of view and they're so poetic and deep. So was most of his dialog during these flashbacks. I didn't think much of it at first, but after a while it just hit me all at once. A guy doesn't talk like this. Okay maybe I'm generalizing. Guys can be poetic. But I read his "poetry" and his deep dialogue and it didn't feel real or natural to me at all. All I could think of was, "I've never met a guy who would talk like this."
Rachel
Rachel.
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.She's like poetry.
Like prose and love letters and lyrics, cascading
down
the
center
of
a
page.
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.
These are Miles's thoughts. It was actually written in that format too. Is this how guys think in their heads?
Tate — who are you? Why are you special?
Miles describes Tate as, "the only girl who has been able to reach me in more than six years". But I kind of had that feeling of WHY? Why is Tate so special? The problem here is that Miles and Tate don't have a relationship rooted in personality or discussions or anything like that. All they do is have sex. All Tate thinks about is Miles. She doesn't have much of a life or personality outside of him. So I felt like: who is this girl? How can she have affected Miles so strongly if she doesn't even have a personality or interests outside of him? All she does is go to work, come home, have sex.
Even as a reader, we didn't get to see a whole lot of her personality. Every thought in her head was just about how delicious Miles is, how she misses Miles, how every word out of his mouth is her new favourite word, etc. If you were to take Miles out of her life, she'd practically be an empty shell. So why is she so special to him?
Tate: the clingy, annoying girl
Ugh, okay. So Miles comes outright and says:
"Don't ask about my past," he says firmly. "And never expect a future."
He's always SO upfront with her. He basically says, "I will never love you. I will never give you hope. You and me will never happen. It's just sex.". And yet Tate is the annoying girl who agrees to the terms and then tries to make him fall in love with her.
I've been holding out hope that if I take it slowly enough with him, he'll eventually break through whatever it is that's holding him back.
Tate
Does anyone else find that annoying? It's like she's saying: "Okay I promise we won't have a future.... yet *wink wink*". As if there's some inside joke that they both know he'll change his mind eventually. Who does that?
Oh, the tragedy!
Okay this bit is spoilery. The tragedy at the end is finally revealed. Turns out Miles got Rachel pregnant when he was 18. She gives birth at the hospital and they're on their way home with their newborn child... and get in a car accident. The newborn dies. Obviously this is a huge tragedy, but when I read it I couldn't help but think, really? It felt like a forced tragedy to me. Obviously this COULD happen, but for some reason it just seemed so unbelievable to me. It's like the author just picked the worst thing imaginable and rolled with that.
So many problems, but I did still kind of like it
I don't know, guys. Ugly Love is kind of like crack. There are so many things I took issue with, but I still kind of enjoyed it. That's why I gave it three stars, which is still a decent rating. Does that ever happen to you? Even with all these problems and annoyances, I can't deny that I was into Ugly Love for a huge portion of the book. And even after I started noticing the problems, it was still un-put-downable for me. I guess that has to count for something.