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This book pissed me off. The number of 5-star reviews that say this book is "amazing" and shit honestly makes me lose quite a bit of faith in humanity, because goddamn it if this book and it’s romance wasn’t toxic, irritating and cringeworthy as fuck.

I was looking forward to reading this book quite a lot actually. I haven't read a lot of CoHo's books before, but I did read Verity a couple weeks ago and I enjoyed it. I didn't think it was perfect by any means but it was still a good romantic thriller that was twisted, shocking and entertaining. However, Ugly Love is a testament to the fact that just because an author has written one good book doesn't mean that all of their books are at the same caliber.

Also, be warned, there will be spoilers and extreme amounts of sarcasm in this very messy review.

Here's the gist:

Tate has a new job and moves in with her brother temporarily until she can find a place of her own. And guess who's her brother's neighbor, coworker and close friend: Miles, a pilot with a super dark past (cue eye roll) and SO many issues. More issues than...I don't know...think of the most messed up dude you know, first ones that come to my head is King Joffrey from GOT and Nate Jacobs for Euphoria...

Yes, this is the level we are at.

The point is, this dude needs therapy. But instead of getting the help he needs, Tate and Miles start a friends (more like strangers)-with-benefits relationship on the condition that Tate never asks him about the past or expects a future because apparently Miles is incapable of love...(cue second eye roll).

So here's the deal: turns out Miles fell in love with a girl named Rachel 6 years ago when he was 18 and found out how "ugly" love was....(cue third eye roll and subsequent gag).

Deep breath.

Alright, let's discuss everything I hated about this book. The following list basically encompasses/summarizes the entire book so it's safe to say I hated the entire thing. God it was bad. So so bad.


#1 Miles and Rachel's "relationship"
I was literally gagging whenever I was reading the chapters from 18 year old Miles's perspective. Seriously, I gagged, I cringed, and shut my eyes from pain. And I think the writing in these chapters was supposed to be beautiful and artistic, but it was just stupid. So goddamn stupid. Anyhow, Miles literally sees Rachel and falls in "love" in seconds. Seconds. It was the worst case of insta-love I've ever seen. They barely know each other and yet they fall in "love" when in reality, whatever they had was probably just infatuation or less. In fact, Miles had just lost his mother, so he basically just REPLACED HIS MOTHER with Rachel, which is so fucking unhealthy. On top of that, their parents are DATING and they KNEW they'd become step-siblings, and yet they still continued their relationship even though they could have easily stopped it because at this point in the story they hadn't even been on a date yet, but they start a relationship despite this because there's this huge attraction between them APPARENTLY. And then there's these huge proclamations of love that were supposed to be so poetic and beautiful, but it was SO CRINGEWORTHY. Like bitch, ya'll ain't Shakespeare. Chill. These are two 18 YEAR OLDS. And as someone who was 18 not long ago considering I turned 19 in April, this is not how 18 year old teenagers talk and feel. Rachel and Miles were acting like they're adults, but they aren't, and I don't think Hoover knows how 18 year olds act, and it was just so throw up-y to see them interact and talk.

But yeah, since they think they're adults even though they aren't, the too geniuses have sex without protection and Rachel gets pregnant. Surprise surprise. And instead of talking to their parents or a trusted adult to deal with it and get advice, being the responsible and intelligent people they are, they decide to keep the baby and to keep the pregnancy a secret for a while. They eventually tell their parents (right after their parents elope because Miles and Rachel just love good timing) which resulted in a super dumb and melodramatic scene with them talking about "love" but whatever. Anyhow, Rachel later has the baby, and the two are super happy for their future and crap, but then bam.

The baby dies in a car crash and then Rachel leaves Miles because she's so sad. And Miles is all like "I will never love again blah blah".

Is it sad that the baby dies? Not really. That baby got lucky if you ask me, or else it would have been stuck with two deadass imbeciles as parents. Did I feel bad that Miles lost the girl he "loved" and his child in such a short amount of time? Also, nope.

I probably sound like a bitch, but I honestly didn't care because their whole relationship was built on nonsensical insta-love and teen angst. The whole Rachel and Miles plotline was just so dumb and melodramatic and consisted of two idiotic teenagers that were way out of their league. It didn't make me feel anything.

I lied, it made me feel lots of things. But these feelings were more in the genre of banging my head against the wall, gauging my eyeballs out, and killing myself.

On top of that, my other problem with the Rachel-Miles deal was that it totally dominated the book. Almost all the Miles chapters were Rachel this and Rachel that. Only like two of his chapters concentrated on his feelings for Tate but it was barely anything in comparison. When he was talking about Rachel, he was off-brand Shakespeare but there was none of that super duper beautiful prose (please note that this is sarcasm. It's pretty obvious, but I really can't risk anyone getting the wrong idea that I liked it because this "prose" was pure crap) when he talked about Tate.

#2 Miles and Tate's problematic relationship

First of all, their relationship was very insta-love as well. I get that they were physically attracted to each other, and fine, whatever, do you what you want, but there was literally no reason for them to fall in love with each other because their relationship was COMPLETELY on the surface. They barely opened up to each other, particularly on the Miles side since Miles barely gives her anything, and yet Tate still falls in love with him magically.

Tate was a total doormat and also the biggest idiot ever. Miles told her upfront that he didn't want anything more than sex from their relationship and he honestly treats her like shit. He doesn't give her any emotional comfort and intimacy after sex, he calls her Rachel while they were doing the deed, and was a huge dick overall. And yet she still stayed with him because she wanted him to fall in love with her, and she'd just let him use her. On top of that she would act as his therapist or at least a very crappy version of a therapist, which was just idiotic. Like this dude is in desperate need of actual therapy.

Of course, the whole Rachel plotline and his dumbass past is stupid as hell- but even by the book's stupid logic, Miles lost his mother, and then a few months after, lost his baby and the girl her "loved", when he was just 18 (ew, but whatever). And consequently, for the last 6 years he has sworn off sex and love.

On a side note, I also find it ridiculous that Tate thinks this dude is soooo good in bed when it has been THIS long since he's had sex and whatever experience he did have was from when he was fucking 18...

Anyhow, this dude is wack in the head. Therapy was LONG overdue, and banging Tate (these sex scenes were very subpar by the way) and Tate "comforting" him ain't gonna cut it.

And yet it does! Why? Because this book is ridiculous. There was this super rushed thing where his BFF tries to talk some sense into him, and then he talks to Rachel who tells him he can love again and that finding love will make the past hurt less. He then runs to Tate to proclaim his undying love for her and BAM. Happily ever after.

But honestly, the way that this is written, Miles does not loves Tate.

Instead he is using her as his own personal therapy dog.

A healthy relationship isn't one where you're totally dependent on your partner for happiness and comfort, but that's exactly how it is between Tate and Miles. This guy is using Tate to cope with the past. Sure, it's fine to use your loved ones as support, but Miles is solely dependent on Tate because he hasn't come to terms with the past on his own. This is beyond unhealthy and completely unsustainable. On top of that, while Tate is acting as his de-facto therapist/therapy animal, we barely see Miles giving Tate much emotional support so the whole thing is very one-sided.

Plus, when Miles gives this huge dumbass love proclamation to Tate, he does not apologize for all the shit that he pulled with her. And yet she takes him back IMMEDIETLY. Why? Because she's the biggest doormat in the world that fell in love with the biggest dick in the world for literally ZERO reason.

Also, they both had personalities equivalent to a box of cornflakes. Actually, I take that back, because that's honestly a compliment since I have some nice memories of eating cornflakes in chocolate milk as a kid- cornflakes honestly aren't that bad, especially if you put them into some sort of sugary milk.

Let's redo this. Miles and Tate had personalities equivalent to overboiled, mushy, unseasoned green beans. Yeah, that's better. The point is, Tate and Miles were bland as hell and some of the most shittily written characters ever.

#3 The sexism
There was quite a lot of sexist undertones in this book that were so irritating. We see this with Tate's lack of respect for herself with all that doormat behavior, Corbin's idiotic overprotection of her, Miles's possessiveness, and just a lot of other shit that isn't outright and blatantly sexist, but still is if you take a moment to think about it. And it was just so gross.


#3 Overall Thoughts
This book was real bad. Real real bad. I genuinely cannot emphasize how bad it was.

The writing was terrible, the romance was horrible and the characters sucked. Like I said earlier, everything about this book was cringeworthy, toxic and irritating. I genuinely do not get the hype around this book. I've read much much better stuff on Wattpad, so it's shocking that such a popular author put out something so awful and that so many people enjoyed it so much. As I said earlier, my faith in the readers of this world has decreased substantially.

However, despite the disaster this was, I think I probably will try more of CoHo's novels just due to the extreme hype around her and because I have a very unhealthy FOMO. Plus, as I said, I enjoyed Verity quite a lot. I'm still incredibly shocked that the same author who wrote Verity wrote whatever this shit was. Verity was by no means perfect, but it was still a very entertaining book, while Ugly Love was a pure disaster. Fingers crossed that my next CoHo experience will be better, though to be honest, it wouldn't take much to beat this.