Review: Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover

Ugly Love, the eighth novel from bestselling New Adult author Colleen Hoover, is a tale about the ugly side of sexual desire, juxtaposed against the healing and redemptive nature of romantic love. Tate Collins is a nursing student, new to San Francisco and too busy for a relationship. Miles Archer is a pilot with few friends and a tormented past that no one is allowed to ask about. Initially the pair cannot stand one another, but the sexual tension between them is obvious. The pair soon strike up a friends with benefits arrangement, but when emotions get in the way, things soon become ugly ...

I think by now, most readers know what to expect from a Colleen Hoover novel--tainted pasts, sexual tension and a dash of good, old fashioned melodrama. Ugly Love has all of this in abundance, though the nice girl heroine, Tate Collins, seemed to me to fall a little flat. Miles' backstory, told in short, poetic chapters, tugs at the heartstrings--it is a story of a forbidden teenage relationship that comes to an abrupt, heartbreaking end. (And not in the way I was expecting.) Most of the present day relationship is told through the eyes of Tate, an otherwise intelligent and capable young woman, whose affair with Miles goes against her better judgement. I think the story could have been improved had the author gone into a bit more detail about Tate's background and if she had properly addressed why Tate was so willing to enter in to her arrangement with Miles, when it was clear that what she truly desired was a relationship. What part of her knew for certain that he was worth it? Then again, sometimes the magic in these books is not to answer the why, but the way the author tells a story of that one-in-a-million romance that worked out despite a number of obstacles.

The event that eventually leads Miles to discover the redemptive and healing powers of love is a surprising one. There was enough material in this book to keep me reading well into the evening. 

A bit of melodrama that tugs at the heart strings, that will no doubt be enjoyed by loyal fans of Hoover's previous novels.

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