Ugly Love

After a busy December, I was happy to find time to indulge in another [a:Colleen Hoover 5430144 Colleen Hoover https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1464032240p2/5430144.jpg] book. [b:Ugly Love 17788401 Ugly Love Colleen Hoover https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632597571l/17788401.SY75.jpg 24878172] takes ‘friends with benefits' to the next level. Like all her books, she focuses on a strained relationship and an unlikely resolution.The female protagonist, Tate, when attempting to move in with her brother in San Francisco, finds Miles passed out drunk against her brother's apartment door. She can't get in without moving him and he's too heavy and unconscious to move. The 80-year-old elevator operator can't help, but he turns out to be Tate's good friend. Especially when she finds out Miles is her brother's friend, loathe to commitment, and wants a sex-without-strings relationship with Tate.The majority of the book leaves Tate in the dark about Miles' aversion to showing love or being loved. But the reader gets glimpses of the problem when Miles' memories from six years before are revealed in chapters interspersed throughout the book.Maybe it's just me, but I enjoyed Tate's ponderings of how she might break through Miles' lack of attachment and then how she finally convinces herself that no matter how much she loves him, he will never let her in. Hoover is a master at toxic relationships, and Miles and Tate seem to have an extremely potent one. It only exacerbates the problem that they are ideal together in bed.I didn't think the ending would be realistic or satisfying, but I was happy to be wrong.