BOOK REVIEW: Ugly Love – by Colleen Hoover

Title: Ugly Love
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Fiction
First published: August 5th 2014
Finished reading: March 12th 2016
Pages: 337

“Some people they grow wiser as they grow older. Unfortunately, most people just grow older.”

After being blown away by Colleen Hoover‘s other novel November 9 last year, I have been dying to read more of her work… I asked around, and most people recommended either this one or Maybe Someday for my next read. Like with all things, one has to go first: I decided to pick up Ugly Love. I can’t describe how much I was looking forward to this read… And trust me, you’re not the only one that is surprised by this low rating. Because unlike just about everyone I know, I just couldn’t enjoy this story at all. It started out promising enough and initially I really had the feeling the prose would be just as good as in her other novel. Unfortunately, I soon started to really dislike Ugly Love. The Miles chapters are plain annoying with his endless Rachel Rachel Rachel and I don’t like the structure of those chapters that much either. It’s not normal prose, but it isn’t exactly poetry either… I can’t put my finger on it, but it didn’t manage to convince me. Also, I kind of wanted to hit Tate for acting so stupid, letting Miles treat her the way he did and ‘feeling liquid’ all the time. Seriously, at one point I was saying to myself: ‘if she is saying that she’s feeling liquid one more time, I’m throwing this book out of the window’. And that would have been painful, because I was reading it in the car while we were on the highway. As you might have guessed already: even though I had high hopes for Ugly Love, unfortunately I don’t belong to the group that loves this book. In fact, I REALLY disliked it and it has definitely confirmed me that these kind of sexy romance stories just aren’t for me.

Tate Collins moves into her brother’s appartment temporarily until she can find a place of her own. She already knew her brother wouldn’t be there to help her move her things into his place, but what she didn’t know is that she was going to find an unconscious drunk neighbor at his doorstep… And so the first time she meets his friend and fellow airline pilot Miles Archer is definitely not a good one. Things don’t really improve later on either; it’s not that she doesn’t find him attractive, but she doesn’t see herself falling in love or even becoming friends with him. But Miles is always there, taunting her… He doesn’t seem to want to start a relationship with her either, but soon their mutual desires are becoming to hard to ignore. They think they found the perfect way to get what they both want with no strings attached, but can they play according the rules?

I had such high hopes for Ugly Love, but unfortunately I ended up really disliking this novel. Both the characters and the Miles chapters were cause of serious frustration and took away any pleasure I could have had of reading this story. I know I’m not a romance fan and I don’t like ‘sexy stories’ in the first place, but since I LOVED November 9 I thought I would enjoy this one as well. I guess I was wrong. I won’t be giving up on Colleen Hoover though!