Sorry fellas, couldn’t very much help myself with the quote. It’s just this happens to be the book quality we’re dealing with here.
1/5 Stars
Recommendation: For those easily pleased readers looking for a hot, possessive, rich bad boy fucking a blank slate’s brains out in a novel that’s more porn than two pages of plot. Interesting enough, but not for those who are looking for something pertinent our of their reads or a relationship with any sort of substance to at least root for. Normally I’d precede by saying this novel was simply not for me or it won’t be for everyone but…. It’s bad, it’s just bad #UnpopularBookOpinionTime
This is where NA is headed down, kiddos.
If anyone has been keeping up with any of my past reviews, it’ll turn out rather obvious that this is very unlike what I’d normally seem the type to read. (I think this is turning into a pattern at this point, christ) And that’s because I’d like to say it is ! For once I will be skipping the how I got this and will just explain this was an e-book gift who’s cover guiltily drew me in (Should’ve known better at this point, I know) and I ended up guilty-pleasure reading to pass the time. Ended up not being a pleasure in the least bit, so now allow me to explain why.
Normally this is the point I’d go on to explain the plot, and I wish I could just leave it at “There’s none” and we’d leave it at that, but since I do appreciate as readers, here is how it goes. Edward Cullen Bennett is rich and a very successful business owner who might as well be laundering money if he’s staying that rich AND doing absolutely nothing around the office than sexually harassing his employees and then engaging in said sex with them. Bella Swan Chloe Mills the personality lacking yet very sexually appealing assistant who happens to work for Bennett. He’s attracted to her, he can’t explain why. She’s can’t stand his guts, she still thinks he’s sexy as fuck. They banter, they argue, they call each other names and then they make love. That’s the story.
I suppose the rest of the plot sort of simply revolves around us admiring how much they can fuck around the office without being caught or ever talking to each other. I’d like to think they never really interact outside of fighting because the authors realized just how little chemistry both characters in fact possessed and instead came to the cheap and lazy conclusion that fighting = sexual tension. Ps Dear Authors: This is not the case, please bother writting good chemistry between characters. Many, many do it right.
See the worse part of this book is that the only thing it has going for it are its sex scenes— or the characters thinking about the next time they’ll be having sex, and it’s just bad. I’m really saddened to say that. They drag on, and on, and on and they’re just so repetitive to the point yo’d get a better reading experience if you were to read the first 100 pages and then skip all the way to the final chapter. This book might as well also serve as an antology of Bennett’s recorded obssesion with panty ripping; every time they’d have sex he’d make sure to ruin her clothes to the point it was boring and frustrating.
Oh, also, I felt her up her in an elevator and was hoarding her shredded panties in my desk drawer. Creeper.
As if Chloe being okay with all of her clothes constantly ripped and expensive lingerie constantly damaged wasn’t ridiculous enough, let’s not fucking forget Bennett also then proceeded to keep those used, ripped panties in his desk drawer. At the office. Because that’s not going to leave a weird stench all around the room. But don’t let the quote fool you, this book isn’t in the least bit self aware of how ridiculous it is. It really takes itself as a serious, empowering and sexy love story of what happens when an alpha male meets an alpha women.
After panty shredding, we were also introduced to button popping just to increase the sexy level. Don’t drop your panties ladies, Bennett might end up keeping them. Ruining clothes is only hot the first time it happens. Then it’s just like some cheesy frat guy crushing a beer can on his head because he can. OH AND! Let’s just not forget the incredibly obnoxious dialogues during the sex scenes, the only time they ever talked and it was absolutely baffling.
And listen, for such little plot, you would at least enjoy it if the characters that move the story were at least developed but that doesn’t seem to be the case either. Bennett is a much more charismatic version of Christian Grey (that in his defense, seems to have come before the entire hype of 50SOG took the world like a storm) that every character in the novel seems to agree only has the redeemable quality of being hot. And trust me, I love me some emotionally abusive characters, possessive jackasses, who want to bend over and break you. I don’t consider myself that special, yeah, I do get totally mixed up in that. It’s just that me as a reader, I demand remotely redeemable or at least complex characters. I want to know who they are, and what they are and why they are and they are so I can root and feel for them. If I have a villain type character I’m supposed to fall in love with, I need reason, not the typical tropes we are awarded. We’re really only supposed to like Bennett because he’s hot and the sex scenes. It’s infuriating.
The worse part has to be some of Bennett’s unreedemable attitude. He blames Chloe for not being able to keep it in his pants and takes responsibility for his actions, as rapey as they can end up being. Could be good, I could like it, but its just terribly handled. He goes to the point of calling Chloe a tease because she happened to be wearing a dress he deemed “virginal” and thus was found himself forced to fuck her. Quality writing people.
Oh but, let’s actually get to the quality, which is normally one of the first things I tend to talk about but… I needed to get more important things off my chest first. My first impression upon finishing this novel is just the way it was written like fanfiction:
I.e.
➜ The bland cookie cutter characters that star this novel and the baffling forgettable side characters that only exist to bring the main characters together. Or apart.
➜ There is no thought or care put into the writing. Words are only used to describe what each character is doing or thinking, but its all poorly written and straightforward. There’s no beauty in the artform, no sort of clever humor or relatability to the characters. It might as well simply be a script or the transcript of a movie written in a book.
➜ The drama. Oh my God, the drama.
He stalked her, (Hello Edward Cullen) she got angry and then they had makeup sex. He treats her like shit, she gets reasonably angry and they have angry sex that then leads to makeup sex. It’s the entire novel. Jesus fucking Christ we could’ve cut the run time of this book by at least half. This book is literally only sex scenes tied together by some bland, cookie cutter relationship drama. Oh and at the end of the book they fall in love. Great, one less sociopath roaming the streets because one more stupid book protagonist fell in love with them.
➜ The poorly handled worldbuilding. There’s no world, there’s just some office that who knows how stays afloat and the one place they go to have a business trip in. It’s not bad if it doesn’t really matter where your novel takes place for it to make sense, but make sure it takes place somewhere as if grounds your novel on reality. You should always make sure your character inhabit a place, not for the place to conveniently work around your characters.
There is just so little care put into this book as a novel with a plot more so than just nice porn to entertain the fans. It’s just like a fanfiction you read online… And here’s the best part ! Upon reading and doing some research, I actually found out Beautiful Bastard used to be a Twilight Fanfiction once entitled The Office that eventually became p2p (As if that one scene of Bennett fantasizing about watching Chloe sleep wasn’t telling enough, HAH !) and honestly… It’s just so sad about the current quality demanded when there are so many great Wattpad published stories out there. Ahhh… The unfair life.
Well anyway, kiddos ! No story to even spoil here so no spoiler section either. Managed to rant without spoiling, look at that. I certainly do not care about reading any of the four other books in the series, so I won’t be continuing this series. Though if you really wish to know, here’s more or less how it goes:
Are you a fan of these type of guilty pleasure novels? Leave your thoughts before !
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