It’s been a while since my last post and safe to say the quarantine stress finally got to me. To combat it, I threw myself into sewing and watching animal crossing streams. That was great and all, but I was not able to focus on reading nor creating content for this blog.
I’m feeling much better now, and I hope to be able to get some bookish crafts up soon. For now, though, here is a book review for Beautiful Bastard.
Beautiful Bastard is one of the first books best writing friends Christina and Lauren published together. The first draft of Beautiful Bastard was a twilight inspired fanfiction written by Christina. Although readers won’t be able to tell while reading Beautiful Bastard. To read more about the origins of Christina Lauren, check out this interview.
Today Christina Lauren has published many romance novels, one of my favorite being Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating. If you have never read a Christina Lauren book but love romance and don’t mind smutty sex scenes, check out their books!
“In the nine months I had worked for him, he had never intentionally touched me. This was most definitely intentional.”
Christina Lauren Beautiful Bastard
Summarizing things
- Chole is only a few months away from graduating from her master’s program and hopefully securing a job at her dream company.
- Chole’s boss, Bennet Ryan, has been a jerk since she began to intern for his family’s company. They bicker and fight daily, but things change during one debrief session, and they end up having sex in the conference room.
- Chole and Bennet continue to argue he calls her a bitch the usual. Chole aims to end their sexual relationship asap but ends up having sex with Bennet multiple times after that.
- When the Ryan family decides to set Chole up with a nice guy, Bennet is obviously jealous but doesn’t admit it to himself.
- Many angsty scenes later, Chole and Bennet fly to San Diego for a business conference. Bennet needs to seal some deals for the company while Chole is eager to support her classmates, who are all giving presentations at the conference.
- San Diego makes both Bennet and Chole realize that they want something more than sex. And by the time they’re ready to fly home, they’ve decided to be together.
- Bennet decides to piss Chole off one last time, and after a big fight, they split ways only neither of them is happy about their time apart.
- Bennet does end up making things right in the end, and the two have a healthy conversation like grown adults and get together.
My Thoughts
Christina Lauren writes good sex scenes, which are always a plus when reading romance novels. Additionally, Christina Lauren’s books are enjoyable, spicy, and entertaining.
But, I did not like this book. It has nothing to do with Christina Lauren’s writing or the plot of this novel, it all came down to the love interest, Bennet. I straight-up hated him until the last third of the book.
Bennet is a big ol misongist which is not sexy at all!
“Like she was my toy and I was keeping the other boys in the sandbox from playing with her.”
Christina Lauren Beautiful Bastard
I was rooting for Bennet to change midway through the book, but he did not. Even after, San Diego Bennett calls Chole Kid offhandedly to a client, and I wanted to puke.
“She’s a great kid. Definitely needs some seasoning though.”
Christina Lauren Beautiful Bastard
Big Yikes do not call your girlfriend Kid, especially if you spent most of your time in the novel calling her a bitch.
I like to think I have a high tolerance for men with misogynist mindset because they’re sadly everywhere. But I wanted to quit this story.
I stuck around to see if Bennet would change and when he did, I decided to bump up my star rating. Once Bennet realizes he wants to date Chole, he stops being the big asshole from the beginning of this novel.
I wish Bennet continued to drink the respect women juice for the foreseeable future, but I trust him to listen to Chole now.
Chole isn’t an annoying character, but every time she decided to sleep with Bennet, I screamed. Not because I knew she was better than him but because Chole was left regretting everything. However all that regret, and confusion could have been avoided if she spoke to Bennet about it.
Bennet’s attitude made me want to fight him, but both of these dorks made me want to lock them in a room until they talked to each other. If these two dorks just spoke to each other, then the angst wouldn’t have had to rely so much on the miscommunications.
“But you need to give me a chance to fix things when I screw up. You know I’m an ass sometimes.”
Christina Lauren Beautiful bastard
That being said a majority of this book revolves around Bennet and Chole having sex. There are some office scenes and reuniting with friends but most of those scenes ended with them naked. As much as I like reading the love scenes, I wish this book had more scenes with these two doing something else such as dinner dates, strolling down the street, and slice of life stuff like that.
My final rating for this book is three stars. My rating would have been higher if Bennet hadn’t angered me so much. The authors did a great job of creating a toxic man because I was ready to drop this book.
That concludes my review for Beautiful Bastard if you would like to follow me around the web, check out the links below.
Until next time continue living in libros,
Gaby
livinginlibros.com 
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