YMMV / Ugly Love

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: The intended moral of the story is that love can sometimes be painful and messy, but you should stick it out and accept the not-so-good parts because the good bits more than make up for it. Due to how it's presented by the narrative, some readers instead interpret the moral as "You should put up with your partner being emotionally unavailable, dumping their unresolved issues onto you and ignoring your needs and feelings because they'll eventually get over it and reward your sacrifice with long-term romantic commitment...even if they insist they only want sex from you".
• Alternative Character Interpretation: It's been debated that Miles was never really in love with Rachel, but rather pathologically infatuated with her. When they first met, he had recently lost his mother to cancer and his father quickly moved on with another woman. Combined with raging teenage hormones, it's not hard to imagine he latched onto Rachel as a source of comfort and stability (such as telling her that she made him believe in God again, he having stopped believing after his mother's drawn-out death). His thoughts about her tend to focus on how perfect and beautiful she is, and how wonderful she makes him feel, but not much about her as an actual person. Their entire relationship lasts a year, tops, before it ends abruptly and tragically with the death of their son (who is the second person close to Miles he lost in a short time period). It could be argued that Miles spends six years obsessing over Rachel and refusing to love anyone else not because his love for Rachel was so deep, but because his relationship with her is bound up in grief, guilt and trauma he doesn't know how to healthily address.
• Ass Pull: Miles has spent six years and just about the entirety of the book refusing to open up emotionally and even consider the possibility of a long-term relationship with Tate, much of which is rooted in severe trauma. However, after a single 10-15 minute visit with his ex, he suddenly finds closure, gets over all his hang-ups about relationships and announces he's in love with Tate, even proposing marriage a few months later. While talking things out with Rachel and seeing that she was able to move on probably did help him a bit, the kind of issues Miles is dealing with are not something you can just 'get over' in a matter of days and there's not much to indicate he's remotely ready to commit to a full relationship with Tate.
• Narm: Some readers had a hard time taking the scene where Miles and Rachel's baby dies in a car crash completely seriously, because just moments before the crash Miles and Rachel are making jokes about the size of their baby's testicles, of all things. It's intended to be a case of So Happy Together, but it's so bizarre and off-colour that the resulting Mood Whiplash ended up as just funny rather than effectively dramatic for some readers. It's infamous to the point that "We laugh at our son's big balls" has become one of the book's most well-known lines.
• Padding:
  • The entire storyline where Miles and Rachel have a Secret Relationship because they're technically stepsiblings is completely irrelevant to the rest of the plot, including having no bearing on why their relationship doesn't work out and Miles' subsequent aversion to romance. It's mostly there to add arbitrary drama to their romance, even though the Teen Pregnancy, disapproval of their parents and subsequent tragic loss of their baby is plenty dramatic enough. It doesn't quite qualify as Trapped by Mountain Lions given them being stepsiblings hastens their romance due to their close proximity, but if this was removed it wouldn't change the plot much.
  • A lot of the book's middle section is taken up by lengthy, explicit sex scenes, most of which do little to advance the story or characters besides reiterating that Tate wants more from her relationship with Miles while he keeps being emotionally unavailable.
• Popularity Polynomial: The book was first published in 2014 and did alright, but wasn't exactly a blockbuster. It then received a surge in popularity and became one of Colleen Hoover's best-known and bestselling books in the early 2020s (with many of Hoover's other novels getting a similar treatment, mostly thanks to Booktok), reaching no. 4 on the New York Times Bestseller List under the paperback fiction category in 2022.
• Strangled by the Red String: Tate's feelings for Miles come off closer to infatuation than love, especially considering that for most of the novel he refuses to reveal anything about himself and their only meaningful interactions consist of sex. There's not much explanation for why Tate is so fixated on Miles - more than any other man she's been with - when he treats her so poorly in the short time they've known each other and gives little indication he feels anything for her beyond lust. Tate is clearly hurt by Miles' attitude (ranging from aloofness to outright hostility), but she sticks it out because she believes he will eventually change; some readers have noted that this sounds like Tate loves the idea of Miles rather than the man himself. Likewise, Miles rarely shows interest in Tate besides sex and insists he doesn't/can't love her right up until the ending, where he abruptly gets over his issues and confesses his love to Tate; the novel tries to imply he loved her all along and was simply in denial, but his actions don't really support this (it doesn't help that most of the Miles POV chapters are focused around his past relationship with Rachel).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Lots of readers have wondered why Miles never sought therapy for his trauma and relationship issues. In real life, there's actually a problem with airline pilots facing stigma and negative effects to their career if they seek therapy or other forms of mental health treatment. This could've been incorporated into the plot, with Miles wanting to avoid talking about and getting help for his issues because he fears it will stop him doing the job he loves. The book could also have explored how Miles feels about being responsible for so many people's lives, considering his backstory involves him accidentally causing the car crash that killed his son. None of these issues are brought up in the story and Miles being a professional pilot ultimately has little impact on the plot or his characterisation; you could probably substitute him being a pilot with just about any other career and it wouldn't make much difference.
  • We find out next-to-nothing about Tate's upbringing and background despite her being one of the main characters; some readers thought that further developing these areas could've given Tate more depth and provided an explanation for why she's such a pushover when it comes to Miles.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Miles:
    • While Miles' backstory (losing his mother to cancer, his father almost immediately moving on with another woman and his girlfriend leaving him after their baby died) is undoubtedly tragic, a lot of readers felt this didn't justify or excuse his selfish and callous treatment of Tate. Despite claiming he only wants sex from her, Miles sometimes treats Tate more like a girlfriend, only to coldly rebuff her if she tries to reciprocate; this includes telling her he wishes he could love her, thus giving her false hope. He gets annoyed or gives her the silent treatment if she asks him personal questions or unwittingly triggers him, but he utterly fails to explain why it upsets him and just takes out his frustrations on her. Even after becoming aware that Tate has deeper feelings for him and that his lack of reciprocity hurts her, Miles continues to use her for sex. That Tate is his best friend's sister but he's still willing to sneak around with her behind Corbin's back also didn't go over well with some readers. While Miles does get called out for his treatment of Tate in the end, he gets Easily Forgiven by everyone after telling Tate he loves her, with not much acknowledgement of how awful his behaviour was or what he's going to do to change.
    • Besides his poor treatment of Tate, some readers felt that Miles' behaviour towards Rachel came off as weirdly obsessive and entitled rather than truly loving. The moment he meets her, he's insisting that they have a special connection and will be together despite him barely having spoken to her and her giving him no indication she feels the same. He also internally says that she's "already mine", wants to let all the other boys in the room to know they have no claim on her and covertly takes pictures of her to show her off to his friends, blatantly objectifying her. His angst over supposedly being unable to be with her because their parents are in a relationship - technically making them stepsiblings - also struck some readers as eye-rollingly melodramatic because at this stage Miles has only known Rachel for a few days; in fact, he knows so little about her he didn't even know her mum was dating his dad.
  • Corbin's over-protective, My Sister Is Off-Limits schtick is treated as him being a loving older brother to Tate who wants what's best for her and just gets a bit over-zealous. However, there are several occasions where he instead comes across as controlling and patronising towards Tate, with little respect for her autonomy. Notably, he tells Tate he doesn't want her hanging around Dillon because he's beneath her, as opposed to him being a serial cheat and sexual predator. The response from Corbin and his friends to Dillon's unwanted overtures towards Tate and Corbin's reaction to Miles hooking up with her is based more around them not respecting him and getting his permission to be with his sister, as opposed to concern for Tate's well-being. Tate notes that he's been hostile towards both her past boyfriends and even her friends because he deems them unworthy, dismissing his sister's thoughts and opinions. He also seems repulsed to hear his sister is having sex, even though she's an adult and he's far from chaste either.

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