Colleen Hoover’s Ugly Love (2014) is a standalone romance novel set in contemporary San Francisco. The story predominantly alternates between the primary characters Elizabeth Tate Collins and Miles Mikel Archer. Tate, a registered nurse pursuing her master’s degree, is in her early 20s. Miles, an airline pilot, is in his mid-20s. The chapters from Tate’s point of view are set in the present, while the chapters from Miles’s point of view are set six years in the past. The third person narrative voice is direct and unflinching, but Miles’s chapters incorporate a poignant poetic narrative in addition to prose. Through Tate and Miles’s clandestine romance, Hoover explores the themes of The Duality of Pleasure and Pain, Relationship Boundaries Versus Emotional Walls, and Fear and Control as Roadblocks to Love.

Hoover is a New York Times bestselling author based in Texas. She has written many romance novels and romantic thrillers for both adults and young adults, including Reminders of Him (2022), It Starts With Us (2022), Verity (2021), November 9 (2015), and Layla (2020). Her novels Confess (2015) and Without Merit (2017) both won the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Romance. Her novel, It Ends With Us (2016), was adapted into a film in 2024 starring Blake Lively. Hoover has redefined the contemporary romance genre through the incorporation of complex characters who face intense emotional dilemmas. Her novels are popular for their incisive, honest, and exciting stories of love that endure despite people’s human flaws. Through her novels, Hoover explores deeper themes of grief and loss, forgiveness, the effects of trauma, resilience, and domestic violence.

This guide refers to the 2014 First Atria Paperback edition.

Content Warning: The novel contains depictions of explicit sex, emotional manipulation, and violence.

Plot Summary

Elizabeth Tate Collins, 23, relocates from San Diego to San Francisco to pursue a master’s degree in nursing while working in the ER as a registered nurse. She plans to live with her older brother, Corbin, in his luxury apartment. When she arrives at the apartment, Corbin, an airline pilot, is away at work. Tate meets Cap, the outgoing elevator attendant who becomes her best friend. She also runs into Dillon on the elevator, a sleazy married man who wants to sleep with her. Just when she thinks she is in the clear, she heads to Corbin’s apartment only to find an intoxicated man blocking the door and crying inconsolably. She calls Corbin while she tries to get into his apartment. Corbin calls Miles, his friend who lives across the hall, to help Tate, but Corbin realizes the drunk man in the hall is Miles. Miles tells Tate to let him into the apartment. Corbin is usually overprotective of his sister, so Tate knows Corbin must trust this man. Tate helps Miles into the apartment as he’s drunkenly weeping and saying the name “Rachel.” She finally goes to bed.

When Tate wakes up the next morning, Miles confronts her. He’s angry and wants to know what happened between them. He’s afraid they “hooked up.” Corbin comes home, and Tate assures Miles that nothing happened, so he should try being nicer to her. Corbin and Miles help Tate move her belongings into the apartment. Miles reintroduces himself to Tate so that they can start afresh, but he doesn’t talk to her much while they’re moving her things.

Miles joins Tate and Corbin for Thanksgiving at their family home, and Miles cuts his hand on the ladder while Corbin is hanging lights. Tate stitches his hand for him, and Miles kisses her. He immediately tells her not to let him do it again. Late at night, they both find their way to the kitchen and work out their sexual tension by coming to an agreement. They’ll sleep together, but Tate can’t expect to learn about Miles’s past or have a future with him. Tate wants to set her own rule as well but can’t think of one to counter. She accepts his proposal.

Tate and Miles act like a teen couple, sneaking around to have sex. However, after each intimate encounter, Miles kicks her out of his apartment. When Miles is away working, he doesn’t text or call Tate at all. As their relationship progresses—or rather, falls into a pattern of intense physical chemistry, lots of sex, and then heartache—Hoover shows Miles’s point of view six years in the past.

During his senior year of high school, Miles is instructed to help a new girl, Rachel from Phoenix, find Mr. Clayton’s English class. Miles sees Rachel with her beautiful hair and eyes. He instantly falls in love with her and texts Ian that she’s going to have his children. In an unfortunate twist, Miles and Rachel find out their parents are planning to marry each other. Miles thinks that his dad was cheating on his dying mother with Lisa, Rachel’s mom, on his business trips to Arizona. Miles’s dad later reveals that he and Miles’s mom had planned to divorce long before he started seeing Lisa. However, when Miles’s mom got sick, he wanted to stay by her side. Rachel and Miles pursue a relationship together with careful rules to avoid getting caught by their parents. They also agree not to have sex, but they do, and Rachel gets pregnant.

Miles and Rachel wait until after graduation to tell their parents the news. Although their parents are furious, Miles disregards them and stays with Rachel. He applies for family housing at the university Rachel wants to attend, and they get approved. Rachel has the baby boy, named Clayton after their English teacher, and Miles is happier than ever. His dad tells him he’s proud of Miles and that his mom would be too. On the drive home from the hospital, light gets in Miles’s eyes, and the car ends up in a lake. Miles only has time to save either Rachel or the baby. Rachel wants him to save Clayton, but Miles saves her instead. She is furious, and they’re both grief-stricken at the loss of their child. They try to be together through the sadness and pain, but Rachel soon leaves Miles with only a note explaining that she can’t be with him anymore because it’s too painful: Every time she sees Miles, she sees Clayton. Miles shuts himself off from love as a result. The day he was crying on the floor outside of Corbin’s apartment would have been his son’s sixth birthday.

Tate can sense that Miles is a good person with a painful history, but he refuses to talk about his past. She feels especially wounded the night they have unprotected sex, and afterwards, he slams the door and leaves her alone without explanation. Miles is upset because when he had unprotected sex Rachel, she got pregnant. Despite their on-and-off again dynamic throughout the novel, Miles acts very much like an overprotective boyfriend. After Tate and Miles’s dramatic unprotected sex scene, they don’t talk for a while. When Miles sees Tate studying with one of her male nursing friends, Miles barges into Tate’s apartment and demands to know if she’s sleeping with him. Although Miles is bothered by the idea of Tate being with someone else, he still won’t admit that he wants to be in a relationship with her.

When Tate eventually reveals her true feelings to Miles, he replies that he was upfront with her from the beginning and is not interested in a relationship. Corbin learns about Tate and Miles’s sexual relationship when he walks in on them in the apartment. Corbin is angry but learns to accept them together. Tate thinks Miles is opening up emotionally, but just when they’re on the verge of a breakthrough, he closes down again. Tate moves out to her own apartment a few blocks away. She says goodbye to Miles, but he acts completely emotionless and unaffected when she leaves. Two weeks later, Miles shows up at her door when she is settling into her new place.

After his best friend Ian’s berating and Cap’s encouragement, Miles decides to visit Rachel. Rachel is happily married to a man named Brad and has a baby girl, Claire. She tells Miles that she understands what he’s feeling, but those feelings don’t have to consume his life. When Miles realizes he’s missing happiness with Tate, he asks Corbin for her address and shows up to confess some of his history and feelings. Miles professes his love, and Tate cries tears of happiness. Miles wipes her tears and kisses her.

Six months later, Miles takes Tate and Cap up in an airplane. Miles has known Cap for much longer than he has let on, and this will be Cap’s first time in an airplane. After Cap gets off the plane, Miles comes back and gives Tate a key to his apartment. He asks her to move in with him. She says yes, and then he also proposes to her. She happily accepts.

The Epilogue takes place about two years later. Tate and Miles have a baby girl named Sam after Cap’s real name, Samuel. Miles was afraid he wouldn’t be able to handle loving another baby again, but when he sees and holds Sam, he knows he is capable of love and true happiness again. Tate is happy, and Miles has the family he always wanted.