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Thursday, November 24, 2016

Book Review: Beautiful (Book #5 in the Beautiful series) by Christina Lauren


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Right off the bat, I have to say that much like reading Beautiful Bitch was a somewhat weird experience for me, because I backtracked and read it after I had read Beautiful Bastard and Beautiful Stranger, reading Beautiful was also a somewhat weird, yet interesting, experience for me due to the fact that I’ve only read three of the books in the Beautiful series (Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Bitch, and Beautiful Stranger) at this point in time. However, I decided to jump ahead and read Beautiful now, so I could review it fairly soon after its release. Admittedly, I finished reading this book a little over a month ago, but I got so busy reading other books, working on other book reviews, and I’ve just been busy with life in general, so I’m only now finishing this review and getting it posted. I definitely feel bad about not finishing this review and getting it posted weeks ago. I should also probably mention that when I write a review for the last book in a series, I usually like to devote a part of the review to briefly discussing my overall thoughts on the series as a whole. However, since I’m jumping ahead and reviewing Beautiful before I read the rest of the series, I’m planning to read Beautiful again and write a follow-up review for the book where I discuss my overall thoughts on the Beautiful series once I’ve read all of the books in the series; that being said, here are my thoughts on Beautiful.

Having read three books by Christina Lauren prior to reading this one, I can honestly say that Christina Lauren have yet to disappoint me, and this book is no exception. I absolutely loved Beautiful, and I thought it was a phenomenal ending to the Beautiful series. As weird as this may sound, something that I used to do a lot whenever I was starting a new book, is that I would jump ahead and read the last few pages of the book after reading the first two or three chapters of the book. I was pretty much always very confused about what was going on whenever I would jump ahead and read the last few pages of the book, but I still loved doing that; because I found that it got me even more excited about reading the book whenever I did that. Reading Beautiful at this point in time definitely had the same effect. It definitely got me really excited to go back and read the rest of the series. For the record, the reason I don’t do that very often now is because I mostly listen to audiobooks instead of actually reading physical copies of books these days.

When it comes to what I thought about Beautiful, one thing about Beautiful that really stood out to me as I was reading it was the overall tone of the book felt very reminiscent of romantic comedies; much like I thought Lauren Blakely’s book, Big Rock, felt very reminiscent of romantic comedies due to its plot. The overall tone of the book didn’t feel all that dramatic and full of angst compared to the tone of Christina Lauren’s writing for Beautiful Bastard and Beautiful Stranger. For the record, I haven’t had any problems with the amount of angst and drama that the other Christina Lauren books that I’ve read so far have had. The overall tone of Beautiful simply felt much lighter compared to their other books. While there were definitely times where Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Bitch, and Beautiful Stranger made me laugh, this book definitely made me laugh the most, and that’s something that I really enjoyed about it.


While I thought that Jensen and Pippa were both great characters, and I loved them as a couple, Pippa is definitely my favorite of the two of them. I’m definitely open to the possibility of my opinions regarding the female characters that are featured in the Beautiful series changing as I read the rest of the series, but at the moment, I’d have to say that Pippa is definitely my favorite between her, Chloe, and Sara. There were quite a few times throughout the book where Pippa said or did something that literally made me laugh out loud. Aside from the fact that there were quite a few times where Pippa made me laugh, I thought that she was simply an awesome character. I also really liked the fact that a part of Pippa’s backstory was that she was raised by a lesbian couple. Plus, the backstory about who her father was, and why she’s an only child was also pretty interesting.

Jensen was also a great character, and I thought that his personality was a great counterpart to Pippa’s personality, since Pippa often acted in a rather unfiltered manner. I thought that it was really interesting that he seemed to view his ex-wife, Becky, as more of an ex-girlfriend that he had broken up with, rather than think of her as a woman that he had been married to; and had subsequently divorced. A part of me would have liked Christina Lauren to have expanded upon what was mentioned about Jensen’s relationship with Becky some more, because I thought the backstory we were given about his marriage was really interesting. Ultimately, the book didn’t really suffer from Christina Lauren not giving more details about his marriage to his ex-wife than they did, though.

Much like I thought Christina Lauren did a great job of handling the progression and evolution of Bennett and Chloe’s relationship in Beautiful Bastard, and the evolution of Max and Sara’s relationship in Beautiful Stranger, I felt like they handled the progression of Jensen and Pippa’s relationship throughout the book very well. The circumstances in which they met, with them sitting next to each other on the plane that they both flew on to get to the vineyard where they were going to go on a wine tour, and Jensen being so annoyed by Pippa that he pretended to be sleeping so she would stop talking to him, only to discover later that they were both going on the same wine tour is one of the reasons why I thought that Beautiful felt very reminiscent of romantic comedies. However, much like a romantic comedy, they began to fall for each other throughout the book, despite Jensen having been annoyed by Pippa when they first met.

One thing that I was very happy to see when it comes to Beautiful is the fact that Christina Lauren actually indicated at the start of each chapter from which character’s point of view the chapter was written. As much as I’ve loved Christina Lauren’s books, the fact that they didn’t do that in their other books that I’ve read at this point in time is something that has always bugged me. Since I’ve jumped ahead and read Beautiful before reading most of the books in the Beautiful series, and I haven’t read any of the books in their Wild Seasons series yet, I don’t know which of their books is the first book that they started indicating from which character’s point of view the chapter was written at the beginning of each chapter. I knew going into this book that they did that with the most recent book in their Wild Seasons series, Wicked Sexy Liar, though. Regardless of when they started doing that at the beginning of each chapter of their books; I’m especially glad that they did that with this book since Beautiful features several epilogues that are written from the point of view of characters from the previous books in the series. I think it would have been incredibly confusing if Christina Lauren hadn’t indicated from which character’s point of view the chapters were written, especially once they got to the epilogue portion of Beautiful.

As for my thoughts on the epilogues for each of the couples, they are definitely a big part of why I plan to read this book again once I’ve read the rest of the series, since this book served as my introduction to a lot of the characters from the series. That being said, it was great to see Chloe and Bennett, as well as Max and Sara, featured in the book a fair amount. While Beautiful Bitch had left me second guessing myself about whether or not I actually liked Max and Sara as a couple more than I liked Chloe and Bennett as a couple, the “Stranger Epilogue” once again reminded me of why I loved the relationship between Max and Sara so much; and I’m feeling even more conflicted than I was before in terms of deciding who my favorite couple in the Beautiful series is at this point in time. It was really great to see that Max and Sara were still madly in love with each other. Much like I especially loved seeing how much Max came to love Sara when I was reading Beautiful Stranger, I absolutely love that he’s still crazy about her, even now that they’re married with four kids.

The “At-Long-Last” epilogue with George and Will, in particular, is a big part of why I plan to do a follow-up review for Beautiful once I’ve read the rest of the series. Because the titles of each of the epilogues came from the titles of the previous books in the series, I was really confused about at what point in the series George and Will were introduced, and what the significance of the title, “At-Long-Last” was. That being said, when it comes to my thoughts on George and Will as a couple based on their brief appearance in the book, I loved seeing a gay couple being portrayed in a positive way; with them being in a committed relationship, and the two of them getting engaged in their epilogue. Being bisexual, I really liked how Christina Lauren portrayed the relationship between Pippa’s moms, as well as George and Will’s relationship in Beautiful. That being said, I was definitely a little disappointed that George and Will were regulated to the epilogue section of the book when it comes to their presence in the book. I would have really liked for George and Will to be featured in the book more than they were. Perhaps they could have joined the other characters on the wine tour. That being said, I’m definitely very excited to learn more about George and Will, both as individual characters and their relationship, as I go back and read the earlier books in the series.

While Jensen and Pippa were the main focus of Beautiful, I love that the book ended with the “Bastard Epilogue”, because it allowed the series to end the same way it began; by focusing on Chloe and Bennett. Christina Lauren did a phenomenal job of showing how much Bennett has grown, and how far he has come from being the “Beautiful Bastard” he was when the series began. I loved seeing how Bennett handled Chloe giving birth to their first child in the “Bastard Epilogue”. In my opinion, Bennett is definitely a character whose character development was handled incredibly well throughout the series.

All things considered, Beautiful is an all around fantastic book, and a great ending to the Beautiful series. While I’m definitely kind of bummed that Jensen and Pippa aren’t a couple that people will get to see more of since this is the last book in the series, I’m very happy with the writing for their relationship in this book. Not only are they a really fun couple, Jensen and Pippa are both great characters as individuals. Beautiful also featured a lot of great moments involving the couples from the previous books, which was really great to see, since this is the last book in the Beautiful series. Reading this book definitely got me very excited to go back and read the rest of the series.

That being said, my final score for Beautiful is 11 out of 10, because giving this book a 10 out of 10 simply wouldn’t be a high enough score to adequately describe how much I love this book.

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