Warning: Spoilers!
Colleen Hoover has a special talent for taking me on a rollercoaster ride of emotions every time I read one of her books. Hoover is a young-adult and new-adult fiction author from Texas whose books have gained a lot of attention within the last few months.
I read “It Ends With Us” about a month ago, and it absolutely crushed me, so I knew I had to keep reading her books.
Most recently, I read “Ugly Love,” and once again I was taken on a trip through love and heartbreak and everything in between. It was originally published Aug. 5, 2014, but has gained a lot of traction, like the rest of Hoover’s books, recently on TikTok.
“Ugly Love” is a novel about Tate Collins, a nurse who’s still in college and Miles Archer, a pilot and Tate’s brother’s best friend. On the day that Tate moves in with her brother, Corbin, she immediately meets Miles, passed out in front of the apartment door. Tate helps Miles into her brother’s apartment after she finds out that he isn’t going to hurt her. Despite their rocky start, Tate and Miles decide to start over and try to become friends.
Miles is quiet and reserved, yet Tate still finds herself attracted to him. Miles, for the first time in six years, finds himself attracted to someone, Tate. Miles’ tragic past, though, makes him believe that he can never love someone again.
Between how Miles feels about relationships and Tate’s lack of time, they decide to keep their relationship strictly sexual. Miles has two rules for Tate: Don’t ask about his past and don’t expect a future. Tate believes that she’ll be able to stick with those rules, but as their time together progresses, she finds it is much harder than she imagined it would be.
We find out at nearly the end of the book, what happened in Miles’ past that made him so cold towards the idea and feelings of love.
When Miles was 18, six years prior to when the book is set, he was in a relationship with a girl named Rachel. Miles and Rachel met on her first day at his school and they were immediately attracted to each other, but they later find out that their parents, his dad and her mom, are actually dating.
Miles and Rachel try to end things, but they find it difficult and decide that because they’re not actually related, that they’ll be okay. They decide to date in secret until they graduate and then, when they can move out, they’ll tell their parents. After a few months of dating though, they find out that Rachel is pregnant and they’re forced to tell their parents, which goes over about as well as can be expected.
Eventually, their parents start to learn how to deal with Miles and Rachel’s relationship and their baby.
In their first semester of college and living on their own in affordable family housing, Miles and Rachel welcome their son into the world, only for everything to come crashing down within days.
The day that Rachel and their baby are released from the hospital, they’re in a car accident, while Miles is driving. The car goes off the road and into a lake where Miles tries to save Rachel and their baby, but only Rachel and Miles make it out of the car alive.
Their entire world is shattered, and on top of the pain Miles is feeling from losing his son, Rachel blames him for what happened and ultimately moves back to Phoenix with her mom.
For the next six years, Miles believes that he can’t love again and that love will only bring the immense amount of pain he felt before.
This book ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped on it until there was nothing left, in the best way.
The book is told from the perspective of Tate in the present day and Miles from six years ago, which brought in a lot of his background for the readers. There’s also a chapter toward the end of the book told from Rachel’s perspective in the present day when Miles goes to her to talk through all of his feelings, which helps Miles understand that he can and should love again.
I loved this book because it made me feel so many emotions. That’s one of my biggest things while reading. If it doesn’t make me feel something, then I don’t think it’s an effective book.
While reading this, I was so mad at Miles for multiple things he did to Tate. He treated Tate so badly for the most part, and while I understand now why he felt the way he did, I felt like he was let off way too easy for a lot of his actions. Tate definitely didn’t deserve to be treated the way she did, and I was hoping throughout the entire book that she would stand up for herself more.
I do understand why she acted the way she did though too. I’m an especially non-confrontational person and, while I hope I would stand up for myself, I could see myself just letting it go.
I wouldn’t say that Miles is absolutely awful because he was a good guy, he just had some really bad things happen to him, but I also hate the way he acted.
The book itself is written so well. I loved the different points of view. I found it really interesting that the chapters that were in Miles’ perspective from six years ago were written like poems, and you could see that after the accident, it’s written like a normal book again. I feel like this represents how open he was to love and feelings before and how closed off he was after.
I would give this book an overall four out of five stars because I did love reading this. I just didn’t love the way Miles and Tate acted. I would have also really liked to see more of Miles’ perspective in the present day, just to get more of a sense of what was going on in his head.
I definitely think this should be on every reader’s to-be-read list, and I’m looking forward to having Colleen Hoover rip my heart out and set my expectations for men way too high again in the future.
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