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Ugly Love

Ugly Love

a novel
RomanceNew Adult Romance
Pages
461
Published
2015
Language
English

Synopsis

When Tate Collins moves in with her brother, she meets Miles Archer — a commercial airline pilot who is closed off to any emotional connection but not to a physical one. Miles offers an arrangement with two rules: no questions about the past, no expectations of a future. Tate agrees, certain she can manage the terms. Told in dual timelines — Tate's present alternating with Miles's past narrated six years earlier — the novel gradually reveals the trauma that made Miles who he is, while Tate discovers that agreeing to rules and living within them are very different things. Ugly Love won the Goodreads Choice Award for Romance in 2014 and reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

EmotionalRomantic
Dual Timeline
Spice level
3.0 avg spice

Genres

Romance New Adult Romance Contemporary Literature Contemporary Romance

About the author

C
Colleen Hoover

Colleen Hoover was born on December 11, 1979, in Sulphur Springs, Texas, and grew up in nearby Saltillo. She earned a degree in social work from Texas A&M University–Commerce in 2004 and worked in social work, latterly as a counselor for the federal WIC nutrition program. She began her first novel, Slammed, on a borrowed laptop in 2011, originally intending it as a Christmas gift for her mother, and self-published it in 2012; its word-of-mouth success led to a publishing deal with Atria Books....

Characters

Tate CollinsProtagonist

A woman who agrees to a no-strings arrangement with a guarded airline pilot.

Miles ArcherProtagonist

A commercial pilot closed off to emotional connection, whose past trauma is revealed in alternating chapters.

Corbin CollinsSupporting

Tate's brother and Miles's coworker; his apartment is where the two protagonists first meet.

All characters in Ugly Love

Frequently asked questions

  • Does Ugly Love have a movie adaptation?

    A film adaptation of Ugly Love was announced, with Colleen Hoover herself involved in the screenwriting process.

  • Is Ugly Love a standalone book?

    Ugly Love is a standalone novel and does not require reading any other books by Colleen Hoover to understand its plot or characters.

  • What are the two rules Miles sets for his arrangement with Tate?

    No asking about the past, and no expecting a future. He presents the arrangement as purely physical with no emotional component. The novel's central tension is whether either of them can actually live within those rules.

  • What is the dual timeline structure in Ugly Love?

    The novel alternates between Tate's present-day chapters, written in third-person, and Miles's chapters from six years earlier, written in second-person. The past timeline gradually reveals the trauma that made Miles who he is, while the present-day chapters chart Tate's growing attachment.

  • Did Ugly Love win any awards?

    Yes — it won the Goodreads Choice Award for Romance in 2014, voted on by Goodreads readers. It also reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, cementing Hoover's status as a commercial powerhouse in contemporary romance.

  • What content should readers be aware of before picking up Ugly Love?

    The flashback timeline contains significant emotional trauma, including themes of pregnancy loss and its psychological aftermath. These elements are not disclosed on the back cover and have caught some readers off guard. The novel's second-person flashback sections are notably different in emotional register from the present-day chapters.

  • Why is it called "Ugly Love"?

    The title reflects the novel's thesis that love, when it happens outside the circumstances we would have chosen for it, can be painful rather than beautiful — that the feeling itself is not the problem, but the timing, the damage, and the inability to stop it are.

  • Is Ugly Love a standalone or does it connect to other Hoover novels?

    It is a standalone novel with no character crossovers to her other works. The flight-crew world it inhabits is unique to this book.

  • Why does Hoover use second-person perspective for Miles's chapters?

    The second-person 'you' in Miles's past sections mirrors dissociation — he has distanced himself so completely from the events that he cannot narrate them as 'I.' The stylistic choice reinforces the psychological reality of unprocessed trauma.

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