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.
