Too Late by Colleen Hoover | Book Review

Title: Too Late
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: New Adult, Romance
Summary: This girl is in an abusive relationship but then starts a secret relationship with the undercover cop who is trying to bust her drug trafficking boyfriend because that's obviously a smart idea.
Rating: 3/10 unnecessary epilogues
Review:

I love Colleen Hoover's books, and she's a great writer. But I feel like this book was not very good.

The premise is interesting and it starts off strong, but everything quickly goes downhill. The characters feel underdeveloped and cliche. I don't like how this story is supposed to be about how Generic Female Lead overcomes this abusive relationship, but in the end it's her Generic Male Hero who ends up saving her from the relationship.

The ending, without spoiling anything, is a mess. Generic Female Lead starts to act completely out of character in a "revenge" scene that is as uncomfortable as it is disgusting. When the reader is feeling grossed out by the main couple of a romance novel, that's probably not the best sign of a good book.

The only interesting character, unfortunately, is Asa, the abusive boyfriend. The 3 points I've given the book come from him. While he's nuts and evil and a terrible person, at least he's got some sort of personality! I would much rather have read a book all about him than the snoozefest that was Generic White People Falling In Love. The backstory of him and his father, as well as the crime ring he runs would have made for a much more entertaining story, in my opinion. In the end, I even found myself hoping there'd be a twist ending, with him winning, just so something about the book could be original. But things end how you'd expect a story like this to end, and it's super boring.

While this is no way turns me off to Colleen's other books, and I'm still going to read anything she and her talent touch, I don't recommend reading Too Late. But if you'd like to read the book anyway, it is available for free on Wattpad.com

Confess book review

Title: Confess
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: Contemporary
Rating: 10 dirty little secrets out of 10
What It's About: Auburn is new to Dallas (ugh, Dallas) and one day she meets an artist named Owen, who sells paintings inspired by the anonymous confessions that people leave for him. They, of course, start falling in love, but they both have big, MEGA-secrets that they're afraid to confess to one another (see what I did there?)
Recommended For: I don't really know. I can't think of another book/movie that centers around confessing things.

Review: So yesterday morning, I finished Ugly Love and I wanted to jump into another Colleen Hoover book, so I started Confess last night at about 11pm and I finished it at 4am. It's finals week, and I chose reading this book over studying. That's how un-put-down-able this book was. It gripped me right from the hella depressing beginning and I just didn't want to stop reading. What kept me going for the first half was the mystery of what Auburn and Owen were hiding from each other. But then once I found out what was going on, I couldn't stop reading, because I had to see how all of the drama was going to wrap up by the end of the story. I don't want to say too much about this book, because there are mystery elements that I don't want to spoil for you. Basically, this isn't really a romance. I mean, yeah there are cute shippy scenes, but this is more of a drama than a romance (I'd divide it 10% luck, 20% skill, 30% romance and 70% nail-biting drama). The romance was well-done, even though there was some insta-love. I liked the addition of art and putting the art into the book. I hate when books spend two paragraphs describing how a piece of art looks, when the message of the art would be way easier to understand if the reader could see the actual art. I do like this book more than Ugly Love, just because Ugly Love was really hard on my emotions at some times, but I can't rate this higher than Ugly Love because I gave Ugly Love 10/10 #ReaderProbz. Anyway, Confess is a very interesting, gripping book and I'd HIGHLY recommend picking it up.
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Ugly Love Book Review

Title: Ugly Love
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Rating: 10 orange juice jugs out of 10
What It's About: Tate moves in next door to Miles and the two decide to start a "no strings attached" sexual relationship, but then they start to fall in love with each other, but Miles' tragic back story is preventing them from actually being together.
Recommended For: Fans of J. Lynn's "Wait For You" series

Review: This isn't the first Colleen Hoover book I've read, but it is the first contemporary NA book of hers that I've read and I'm starting to see what all the hype is about with her. Normally in contemporary romance, the tragic back story for whichever character is suffering from the "I want to love you but my past is getting in the way" trope, is very cliche. "My daddy didn't love me," "I've had my heart broken before," "I'm just not good for you." They're all so played out. But with Ugly Love, there was a really, REALLY tragic story behind why Miles couldn't let himself pursue a romantic relationship with Tate, and it was the first time I'd read about the complicated love interest being complicated for this certain reason (which I'm not going to spoil). I think that this back story worked even better because of the way that the book is written. There are chapters in the present from Tate's point of view, where she talks about how frustrating it is that Miles won't tell her anything about his past, but those chapters are alternated with Miles' flashbacks to six years ago. The flashbacks lead to a climax where we finally find out what happened to Miles, and it's much sadder than you think it's going to be when you start the book. Another thing I really liked about this book was that even though Tate is the main character, this is Miles' story. He's the character that grows the most and goes through all the development, Tate is just a catalyst for that to happen. Normally, I'd be like "why is the girl only here so the man can get his shit together?" but the moral of this story is the most important part, and the moral comes from Miles' character arc. The lesson he learns is what's supposed to stick with the reader, and it's a good thing that the romance was a little sidelined so that the reader could focus on what Miles was going through. It's not often that we see New Adult books that go beyond "hot 20-somethings have sex and there are mild inconveniences thrown in." There's an actual story to be told with Ugly Love. And it's a pretty great story.

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