By Crystal Olague || Staff Writer

For this week’s review, I decided to talk about a book that I did not like. This may be a shock to some people, but today we are going to talk about Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. This book is not a favorite of mine for so many reasons, but we will get into that soon enough. 

Honestly, even though I read it last year, I do not remember much about this book. The book follows Tate, a registered nurse, and Miles, a pilot. Tate moves to San Francisco to get a better job and plans on staying with her brother, Corbin, until she gets on her feet. She soon meets Miles, Corbin’s best friend, after getting into Corbin’s apartment, which was not the best introduction. We watch as Miles and Tate fight the obvious tension between them because of Corbin. They pretend that there is nothing there, until they can’t deny it and end up becoming friends with benefits. The main condition that Miles had in order for them to continue their situationship was that Tate wasn’t allowed to ask Miles any questions about his past or expect a future with him. Tate ends up agreeing but is unable to make up rules for him as well. We watch as the two continue to sneak around behind Corbin’s back, but the relationship seems to be one-sided considering the fact that every night, Miles would kick Tate out of her room once they were done. It got worse when Miles would go away for work and would never call or text Tate at all, making her feel used. As we’re following Miles and Tate, we also get the background story about Miles and his experience with love to truly understand why he is so afraid to experience his love for Tate. The entire book revolves around Miles’ past and Tate trying to get Miles to express his love for her and trying to get into a relationship with him. 

Now onto the reasons why I dislike this book. When I first read the book, I liked it, and I was obsessed with the characters. Looking back, I’ve realized that this is just a poorly written book. There were so many parts of the book that just felt as if a child wrote them due to the extremely plain and basic writing that I did not expect from a book this popular and hyped. Not only did some parts feel poorly written, but there were other parts of the book that genuinely made me feel so uncomfortable reading. I won’t mention those parts in this review, but there were so many scenes where I questioned why they even needed to be included. This is not to say that I didn’t like the book when I was first reading it, especially since it did help me get back into reading after not reading for so long. I believe that it is okay to read these types of books if you are trying to get into reading and want a really quick and easy book, but at some point I believe that you should move on to something better. 

All in all, I rate this book a 2.5 or 3 stars out of 5. That’s all for this week and I will see you next week in Crystal’s Corner.

Junior Crystal Olague is a Staff Writer. Her email is colague@fandm.edu.

By TCR