Tags: book club, books, reading, Colleen Hoover, young adult
The first Colleen Hoover book that I read was a Christmas present from my mom. “Ugly Love” was the title.
One thing Hoover does have going for her is that the book covers are aesthetically pleasing. I’m a big sucker for anything that looks cute, so I decided to give it a shot.
“Ugly Love” was a terrible start to my venture of Hoover novels. How it has such good ratings is beyond me.
The story follows female protagonist Tate Collins and male protagonist Miles Archer. To summarize the story, Miles is extremely disrespectful to Tate for no apparent reason.
I spent almost my entire time flipping through the pages, waiting for Hoover to explain what tragic event caused him to act like this, which I’ve heard is pretty much the entire plot of almost all of her books. She gives her characters traumatic backstories but doesn’t really develop actual personality traits.
Tate expresses in her inner dialogue that she is fully aware Miles treats her poorly and she knows that she deserves better. She was a complete doormat to him for the sole reason that she found him attractive and knew little about him for the entirety of the first half of the book.
I felt that she had very little depth and lacked interesting qualities, especially for the main character.
Tate’s character development was pretty much nowhere to be found and there were some pages that made me actually physically cringe (If you’ve read it, I found the “just finish Miles” part the worst of it all.)
The second book of hers I read was “It Ends With Us.” This was heavily influenced by “BookTok” (a side of Tiktok that reviews and recommends books). Despite my horrible first impression with “Ugly Love,” I had to give her another chance due to the rave that was all over my for you page.
“It Ends With Us” reminded me of something that I would have read on Wattpad in middle school. I have read One Direction fan fiction that was better than that book.
The protagonist’s name is Lily Blossom Bloom and she owns a flower shop and writes letters to Ellen DeGeneres instead of going to therapy. I struggled to get to the end and it was full of cliches that didn’t really add much to the story.
I gave up on Hoover after that. Two of her books were two too many. Maybe I’m being close-minded, and I can acknowledge that.
I have heard positive things online from other Hoover haters about her book “Verity,” so who knows, maybe one day I’ll put my grudge aside and give her another shot. One thing for certain is that I will be renting it from the library and not spending money on that.
On a positive note, Hoover’s books have definitely gotten some of my friends back into reading and I can see how the plots could attract those that aren’t too into reading. It is fast-paced, filled with drama, and contains easy-to-read language.
A few romance titles I would recommend for people who are looking to get back into reading are “Looking for Alaska,” “Icebreaker,” “They Both Die at the End” and “Eleanor and Park.”
Jochum can be reached at [email protected].
