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

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.

Book Review: Beautiful Bitch (Book #1.5 in the Beautiful series) by Christina Lauren

Right off the bat, I have to say that reading Beautiful Bitch was definitely somewhat of an unusual experience for me due to the fact that I hadn’t realized that it was considered #1.5 in the Beautiful series, and that Beautiful Stranger is labeled as #2 in the series until after I had finished listening to the audiobook version of Beautiful Stranger. Putting aside the fact that it was kind of weird for me to backtrack a little bit by reading this book after reading and reviewing Beautiful Stranger, I absolutely loved this book. One of the many things that I loved about Beautiful Bitch is that we got to see the next chapter in Chloe and Bennett’s relationship after they got back together at the end of Beautiful Bastard, and embarked on an actual committed relationship. I felt like the relatively immediate aftermath of Chloe and Bennett getting back together at the end of Beautiful Bastard that we got to see in flashbacks that were featured in this book was very true to how I would imagine things playing out between Chloe and Bennett; regardless of whether Christina Lauren had written Beautiful Bitch, or if they hadn’t, and it had been left up to the reader to imagine what next chapter of Chloe and Bennett’s relationship after the events of Beautiful Bastard would be like.

As much as I ultimately grew to love Bennett as a character by the end of Beautiful Bastard, and had thought that he had undergone some pretty great character development throughout Beautiful Bastard; he definitely didn’t come across as being the kind of guy who would immediately transform into a guy who would be worthy of receiving a “Boyfriend of the Year” award by the end of Beautiful Bastard. I imagined him experiencing some growing pains as he and Chloe embarked upon being in a committed relationship with each other, and that he would struggle with it a little bit; so I was absolutely thrilled to see that Christina Lauren wrote Bennett that way to a certain degree in this book. That being said, I did think that it was kind of odd that Chloe didn’t really struggle at all in terms of dealing with the way that their relationship had evolved over time like Bennett did. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not upset that Chloe didn’t really struggle in any way when it came to dealing with the two of them going from being in a rather casual workplace romance to being in a committed relationship, as well as the evolution of their relationship in the time that had passed between the end of Beautiful Bastard and the beginning of Beautiful Bitch. I just thought that it was a little odd that Chloe didn’t seem to really struggle at all with the shift in their relationship.

Despite the fact that Bennett did seem to struggle in some ways in terms of adjusting to being in a committed relationship with Chloe, I love that Christina Lauren really portrayed Bennett as being incredibly invested in his relationship with Chloe, and that they showed Bennett really making an effort to work on their relationship throughout the book. While I usually think that having a romance novel or any kind of book for that matter be low on conflict and angst can really make a book incredibly boring, I’m honestly really glad that Christina Lauren didn’t have anything too dramatic and angst-ridden happen between Chloe and Bennett in this book; such as have one of them cheat on the other, or have one of them almost cheat on the other. The fact that most of the problems that Chloe and Bennett had to deal with throughout the book basically had to do with their conflicting work schedules getting in the way of them being able to spend time together now that Chloe is no longer Bennett’s assistant, reminded me a lot of the simplicity of the problems that arose between Jake and Chelsea throughout Emma Chase’s Legal Briefs novella, Sidebarred. Pretty much all of the problems that Jake and Chelsea dealt with throughout Sidebarred had to do with them raising Chelsea’s nieces and nephews together, with Jake serving as a father figure to the kids now that he and Chelsea were married with a baby of their own on the way, but I digress.

Book Review: Beautiful Stranger (Book #2 in the Beautiful series) by Christina Lauren

I’d like to start out this review by saying that while I’ve been planning to read and review the entire Beautiful series, as well as Christina Lauren’s other series, Wild Seasons, ever since I read and reviewed Beautiful Bastard back in May, the decision to read and review Beautiful Stranger at this particular point in time was very random and spontaneous on my part. That being said, I’m so glad that I decided on whim to read Beautiful Stranger now, because I absolutely loved this book, even more than I loved Beautiful Bastard.

When it comes to what motivated me to read Beautiful Bastard, the main thing that originally made me want to read it was that I had heard that much like E.L. James’ Fifty Shades trilogy, Beautiful Bastard also originally started out as a Twilight fan fic. Because the similarities to Twilight are very obvious at times in Fifty Shades of Grey, a big part of me wanted to read Beautiful Bastard to see if its Twilight fan fic origins were at all obvious in the book. I’ll admit that while I was genuinely interested in reading Beautiful Bastard, I definitely went into reading it with a certain amount of cynicism when it came to my expectations regarding Christina Lauren’s writing ability and the book as a whole.

Ultimately, I ended up absolutely loving Beautiful Bastard, and I really hope I made that clear in my review of the book. I also realized that it was definitely unfair of me to project my thoughts regarding the fact that I personally think that E.L. James is a terrible writer onto Christina Lauren in any way, simply because both Fifty Shades of Grey and Beautiful Bastard originally started out as Twilight fan fiction before I even actually read Beautiful Bastard. After reading Beautiful Bastard, I came to the conclusion that regardless of the book’s fan fiction origins, Christina Lauren are legitimately talented writers who definitely deserve to have the success that they’ve achieved with their books. While I haven’t read the original fan fic version of Beautiful Bastard, I’d say that they did a really great job of making Beautiful Bastard its own thing that’s completely separate from Twilight.

Honestly, I was very surprised by the overall quality of Christina Lauren’s writing when I read Beautiful Bastard, and Beautiful Stranger also proved to be a wonderful surprise in some very different ways. The thing that probably surprised me the most about Beautiful Stranger is the fact that while the plot of the book is pretty much about Max and Sara being in a sex with no strings attached relationship, it’s a surprisingly sweet and romantic story. I was also really surprised by the emotional depth that Max and Sara’s relationship ultimately had, which I’d say is a real testament to Christina Lauren’s talent as writers. I don’t think a writer whose writing is either rather mediocre, or just plain bad could write a book about two people who’re in a sex with no strings attached type of relationship in such a way that the relationship and the book as a whole actually has a lot of genuine emotional depth to it. Christina Lauren, on the other hand, really did a fantastic job in terms of the way the relationship between Max and Sara was written, writing them as individual characters, and the writing for the book as a whole.