Review : Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover

Summary (from Goodreads) 

Title : Ugly Love
Author : Colleen Hoover
Publication Date : August 5th 2014
Publisher : Atria Books
Goodreads - Amazon - Barnes & Noble

When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she knows it isn’t 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 realize 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 realize almost immediately they can’t handle it at all.

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

Personal Thoughts

Ugly Love is different from anything that Colleen Hoover has every written. Sure, it has her trademark raw, honest and heartbreaking story, but in Ugly Love all these features her multiplied by ten-fold. I'm going to frank, this is not the book for everyone. It's one of those books that people are either going to hate or love and fortunately, I belong in the latter group.

The first thing you need to know before you go into Ugly Love is that this isn't Tate and Miles' love story. If you're going to expect that, you're going to be sorely disappointed. This is solely Miles' story illustrating his downward spiral and how he eventually started to pick pieces of himself together. Tate was mostly an accessory to help him gather himself. It was difficult to read at first and quite painful too, but that's the thing with Colleen Hoover's books. She tackles difficult subjects that internally tears you apart and rips you to shreds. Miles' POV was confusing to me at first. It's written in poetry style, but Nereyda pointed to me that the author had an underlying purpose with it. You need to read the book yourself to find out because I can't divulge it here because of spoilers. It's even more heartbreaking when you realize what she has done. Colleen sure does like to play around with the emotions of her readers.  Her writing in Tate's POV was, as usual, beautiful. It's the kind of writing that is really simple, but still has an emotional hold on you. It pulls you in from the first page and refuses to let you go. I've read about 80% of her books and I'm impressed by how every single time I pick up something by her, I fall in love with her writing all over again.

I know a lot of people are wary to read Ugly Love or didn't like this book because they didn't want to see Miles and his first love, Rachel's love story through Miles' POV, but it didn't bother me because it was essential to the story. As the title of the book suggests, the love depicted in Ugly Love is ugly. His relationship with Rachel, while it started off on a sweet note, was undeniably toxic and unhealthy, but not in the typical way you see. You can tell this through his POV. It was an uncomfortable sort of romance and it showed how being obsessed in love with the other person can be a horrible experience. His romance with Tate, on the other hand, was much calmer. Miles was awful to Tate for the most part, but he stated his intentions to her very early on into their "relationship". But that's the point of the book though. They had explosive chemistry together and this is definitely Colleen Hoover's sexiest book yet. His relationship with Rachel had destroyed him and his view of the people who cared about him. And then there was the incident that broke him and Rachel apart. You guys! When you find out the significance of the cover, you're going to want to hide under your covers for days. It was awful, heart-wrenching and an absolute nightmare. I got teary-eyed and my sister wondered what was wrong with me.

Ugly Love was ultimately a fantastic read for me. It depicted the two sides of love : the ugly side that tears you apart and kills your personality and the beautiful side that helps you heal. It was a gorgeous story and while not perfect, it was a soul-touching read. It's the kind of book that will stay with me for the longest time.

Rating

Cover : 4/5
Plot : 4/5
Characters : 4/5
Writing : 4/5