Book Review: Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren

Hey People!

It’s now been well over 2.5 years since I last wrote on this blog, and I have to say, I did not expect to return like this.

I now understand the power of dissatisfaction (I mean, it’s not like I don’t know what’s behind it… I’ve been working in customer service for 4 years now, and we humans, are always more keen to speak out when we’re unhappy, than when we are happy with something)… so to be clear, yeah, this book was not for me… =/

But hey, before I get into why Beautiful Bastard was not my favourite, I just want to say… I missed this! Is this even done nowadays? Or is everyone on TikTok? (I mean, is there anyone out there who hasn’t downloaded the app during lock down?). And how are YOU? It’s been a pretty intense 2020/2021, are you OK?

Now, back to the subject at hand. I’ve had this book on my TBR since I started to read romance books, and for some reason, that I never could quite put my finger on it, I just didn’t get to it. But I moved houses a few months ago, to a place slightly out of the city, so whenever I go into the city, I pop up an audiobook, and I’m able to get through books quite quickly like this (best subscription that I have right now if for sure Scribd). I finished a few of Emma Chase’s books (re-reads), and thought “no time like the present”. Fair warning, I might drop some spoilers here. You’ve been warned…

So there I was, just cruising on my way to Lisbon, and not even 10 minutes into the book, and I’m having second thoughts. Why? Hmmmm. For context, I love smut, big fan here, but I like my smut with character development, context, relationship development doesn’t hurt either.

From my understanding this book started as online fanfiction that was later published, and all the merit to the author, but it reads exactly like that:

• each chapter is its own world with instant gratification to the reader;
• no thought out plot for the whole book;
• so much sex… no, I’m serious, this was too much.

I wasn’t able to understand the characters and much less like them. Bennett was a bastard to Chloe from the start, and the whole relationship did not make sense to me. Mostly I think because they start their sexual relationship completely out of nowhere, one moment it’s “hey, I need to make a presentation“, and on the next “oops, are we banging on top of the table without a freaking condom on” (spoiler alert, yes they were!). But this was the first chapter. And from this point on there is no effort to develop either of them.

One thing that left me really really confused was Chloe’s decision towards the end to abandon her job of many many years, and her almost finished internship project, because she felt like she was at a disadvantage in their relationship, as she was his intern. This part, yes, she was, and yes, when it would turn to shit, she would be the one burned for sure. But what confuses me, is that this was not a concern when she was initializing some of their activities IN THE OFFICE. There’s one scene that I had so much trouble with, because until that point he was always the one initializing it in one way or another, but then she takes the reins (I mean, girl power and all), but then your attitude doesn’t match your words and thoughts… yeah…

But I want to address something that made me mad. I heard the audiobook as I mentioned before, and this was published by Simon Schuster Audio (not a small company). However, in a book told in dual POV and in the first person, they decided to have a single narrator for the whole thing.

Why would you do that?

There is nothing weirder than hearing a male masturbation scene narrated by a girl trying to sound a bit more masculine. Why didn’t you just get Sebastian York? The narration can make or break a book, and I have to say, the book was already a miss for me, but the narration make it that much worse.

But I did finish it… yeah, don’t really know how. However I will not be reading the remaining books in the series. I like big series, where I can just explore a group of friends, however, because there was no world or character building, I really just can’t.

In the end I rated this book:

Questions for you: have you read this book? what are your thoughts?