Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren

Posted 28 March, 2013 by Heather in Blog, Featured, Heather, Heather Book Review / 20 Comments

Beautiful BastardBeautifulBastard

(Goodreads, Amazon)

by Christina Lauren

(Goodreads, Amazon, Website)

Published February 2013 by Gallery Books

Copy provided by publisher in exchange for honest review

contemporary

An ambitious intern.
A perfectionist executive.
And a whole lot of name calling.

Whip-smart, hardworking, and on her way to an MBA, Chloe Mills has only one problem: her boss, Bennett Ryan. He’s exacting, blunt, inconsiderate—and completely irresistible. A Beautiful Bastard.

Bennett has returned to Chicago from France to take a vital role in his family’s massive media business. He never expected that the assistant who’d been helping him from abroad was the gorgeous, innocently provocative—completely infuriating—creature he now has to see every day. Despite the rumors, he’s never been one for a workplace hookup. But Chloe’s so tempting he’s willing to bend the rules—or outright smash them—if it means he can have her. All over the office.

As their appetites for one another increase to a breaking point, Bennett and Chloe must decide exactly what they’re willing to lose in order to win each other.

Originally only available online as The Office by tby789—and garnering over two million reads on fan fiction sites—Beautiful Bastard has been extensively updated for re-release.

My Thoughts:

Chloe Mills has the unfortunate experience of interning for Bennett Ryan when he returns from overseas to join his family’s giant advertising company while she finishes her MBA. He’s successful, arrogant, hard to please, thoughtlessly rude, a workaholic, and downright gorgeous. And that’s why Chloe and her best friend have nick named him “Beautiful Bastard.”

She’s smart, accomplished in her own right having worked for Ryan Media throughout college and being hand-picked to be Bennett’s assistant by the head of the company, and generally stands up for herself—which is why Chloe and Bennett have a hate-hate relationship with a grudging mutual respect as soon as they meet face to face.

This book pulls no punches and doesn’t make you wait for the sex. Barely thirty pages in, Chloe and Bennett are arguing in a boardroom after normal working hours and BAM, the sexual tension just explodes leading to the sexy times. And this cycle repeats for most of the book: argue-makeup sex-fight some more later-more sex—all while hiding their inappropriate boss-intern relationship from their coworkers. When what started out as a sex only relationship evolves into something that involves actual feelings, complications arise on both the personal and business front that neither Chloe nor Bennett ever expected.

I give Beautiful Bastard a three out of five. There just wasn’t enough character development for me. Bennett is a jerk throughout the entire book, and even when he finally does some good at the end, you don’t really get to see if he’s changed or not because the book gets wrapped up too quickly. Chloe disappears for part of the book at a very pivotal time in her career and life so you don’t get to see how she’s changing for the better—if she is bettering herself at all.

The book is written in alternating Chloe and Bennett points of view chapters, which was nice to get a look at what’s going on inside of both of their heads. The text itself is well written and flows with a nice, even pace. As for this originally being a Twilight fanfic, unless you are very familiar with Twilight and fan fiction in general (as I am), you’ll never be able to tell that this was one to begin with. Chloe and Bennett are pretty far removed from Bella and Edward. The secondary characters are interesting when you encounter them, and I’d like to have seen them in the book more to give it more dimension.

Bottomline: Beautiful Bastard is a quick, fun read if you’re looking for a book that’s heavy on sex, lighter on the romance and heavy character development/revelations.

 Rating 3

Heather

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I'm a PhD chemist who loves sarcasm, music, and books-paranormal, mystery, thriller, suspense, horror, and romance. Most of my free time is spent at the martial arts studio these days--whether practicing Combat Hapkido or reading books while watching my son's Taekwondo classes, or even working up a sweat with Kickboxing for fun. Goodreads

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20 Responses to “Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren”

  1. These prior-fan fiction novels kill me. They’re so reliant on people’s knowledge of the characters from whatever book they’re based on that there is barely any character development. Plus, why do the guys have to be such jerks? A dominant male (whether an alpha or sexual Dom) doesn’t necessarily mean an ass. /minirant
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    Heather 4/2/2013

    This one really isn’t so reliant on your Twilight knowledge to get the book, there just really isn’t much character development at all until the very end. Even then there isn’t much. Things were just pretty static throughout.
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  2. I read Beautiful Bastard a month and a half ago or so, and my review for it very closely mirrored your own. It was hard for me to get by the fact that Chloe absolutely can’t stand this guy (with good reason – he really IS a bastard, isn’t he?), yet she has no problem having lots of sex with him. It didn’t give me lots of the warm fuzzies I like in my books, you know? Great review, Heather!

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    Heather 4/2/2013

    I’m glad that I wasn’t the only one who had lukewarm feelings about this book. I totally agree, Krista!
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  3. This book looks like it is a lot of fun. I haven’t heard of it before. I don’t really know that I would be able to just put my very negative feelings aside for someone if he really was that much of a jerk, but who knows.

    Thanks for the great review and for sharing a new book with me 🙂
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    Heather 4/2/2013

    This is definitely a book where you can suspend all of your disbelief and just go with the flow for a few hours. Thanks for stopping by, Michelle!
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  4. It sounds like this one focussed a bit too much on the sexy times and not enough on the development of the characters. I am happy to see that their relationship progresses though! That’s always good 🙂
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    Heather 4/2/2013

    I think that’s what happened with this book, Jenni. Too much sex, not enough character development for sure. It might have been happening behind the scenes at the very end, but you didn’t get to see it, and that was disappointing.
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  5. I didn’t realize this was Twilight fanfic. I think the ideal published fanfic is like this where you really can’t tell that it’s inspired. Sort of like The Mortal Instruments series – if you didn’t know Clare’s background, it’s pretty hard to tell how inspired by Harry Potter it is. But if you do know her background, you can pick up on a lot of things.
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    Heather 4/2/2013

    I’d heard that the Mortal Instruments series started off as Harry Potter fanfic, but I’ve yet to pick up those books yet. I have them all waiting here on a bookshelf waiting to be read, but I’m waiting for the series to be complete since I’ve heard the cliffhangers are killer.
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  6. I’ve seen a few reviews for this one and I definitely think the fighting and getting back together (or whatever) would drive me bonkers! I don’t think this one is for me but I’m glad you still enjoyed it okay!
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    Heather 4/2/2013

    The arguing followed by sex is almost an endless cycle for a good portion of the book, and it got a bit tedious after a while. This could have been a much better book if things were changed up a bit and the characters just grew and experienced different things more towards the middle of the book instead of the end.
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  7. I’ve heard about this one — another Twilight fanfic turned book. I’d rather not have an abrupt ending and I’m not into the jerk-appeal factor so I don’t think this is a book for me. But great review!
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    Heather 4/2/2013

    Beautiful Bastard probably isn’t the book for you if you don’t want a book where the main guy is a bit of a jerk and most of the book’s changes happen in the last quarter of the text.

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  8. AH

    Nice review. This book didn’t work for me. Lots of angry sex everywhere – but alas, no character development. Even the cover of the book looks like a picture I saw on the fanfic pages.
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    Heather 4/2/2013

    I’m glad you thought there was no character development in Beautiful Bastard too.I wonder if there was more development in the original fanfic and it was just cut from this for space considerations?
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    AH 4/3/2013

    You don’t need as much character development in a fanfic. The characters are already known to the readers. That’s the biggest problem with P2P – if the author doesn’t take the time to develop “their” characters, the characters seem flat. They just lack the layer and dimension that you see in an original work.
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