Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren

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2 Stars

Official Synopsis: 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

This is the story of how two people who are incredibly mean to each other, have lots of sex and then say I love you. That is literally what “Beautiful Bastard” is about. I would never classify this as a love story, because no one actually falls in love. I also wouldn’t call it erotica, because while the sex scenes try really hard, they just are not hot enough. Chloe Mills is an intern at a multi-million dollar company, that some how cannot live without her.  Bennett Ryan is the mean COO of his father’s company and Chloe’s boss. After nine months of butting heads and Bennett being a complete bastard to Chloe, they begin having sex. It comes out of nowhere, there is no real hint that these people want each other, they just start doing it and cannot stop.

That kind of storyline drives me crazy. The “I hate you, but you’re so hot I can’t stop myself from having unprotected sex with you everywhere” storyline. Let’s face it, it is not that difficult to control your body. Bennett and Chloe are unbelievably awful to each other. They legitimately hate each other for most of this book, but some how they have sex in conference rooms, in office hallways, in Bennett’s office, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I understand passion and lust are sometimes beyond our control, but Chloe is supposed to be this serious and ambitious girl, why would she risk her career and her job to have sex in hallways with a guy she doesn’t like? It makes no sense. You can say, well, she probably was in denial about liking him. Fine, but how can you like someone who treats you like something on the bottom of his shoe?!

I have worked for media companies, entertainment companies, advertising companies and movie companies since I was 16 years old. I have been the intern to Academy Award winning directors, executives, TV show head writers and company presidents. As good as I was at my job, I never found myself as comfortable and as needed as Chloe Mills is in this book. Sure, she has some kind of MBA internship, but guess what I know people who were MBA interns and they didn’t go to the President’s house for dinner and the president wouldn’t have stormed into their bosses office to demand that the executive treat the intern better. Chloe’s relationship to everyone else in this book is extremely absurd. Everyone’s like “we can’t do this without Chloe.” She is an intern! Of course you can do it without her. If Chloe left, you would still be able to run your million dollar business effectively! Give a me a break! I rolled my eyes at 90% of the office/business scenes, because it is pretty obvious to me that the writing team Christina Lauren, probably have never spent a day in a corporate office before writing this book.

I think it’s incredibly sad when adults sit down to write fan fiction of teenage stories. How an adult can read “Twilight” and think it is so epic that they have to write Bella and Edward in other situations is beyond me. Liking and finding “Twilight” to be entertaining, I get, but not middle age mothers being so obsessed they decide to write their own book starring these characters. I actually don’t know how old the writing team Christina Lauren is, but since their bio claims they have jobs, etc I’m going to say they’re not 16.  It blows my mind that these authors and the author of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” have been able to be successful by copying and repackaging someoneelse’s characters. I also find it shameful that publishers are actually going out of their way to release fan fiction. What happened to looking for the next great thing? Not re-releasing the same crap in different forms! By the time I have kids and they begin reading, publishing will just be a bunch of fan fiction about characters actual writers have created.

I have to say one thing about EL James, at least she wrote a story. We know about her character histories and there is a beginning, middle and end. The same cannot be said for “Beautiful Bastard.” This “book” consists of a bunch of scenes thrown together where Chloe and Bennett are mean to each other and then have sex. There is no real exploration into the characters and their histories. There is no characterization or evolution. One day out of nowhere they just stop fighting. Nothing happens to bring this truce along. The authors need them to stop fighting, so they do. There is no real conflict or resolution in this story. There is nothing and no one to really root for. I mostly had a vague interest in whether or not they would end up together. There are no stakes. The author tries to throw in the idea that Chloe’s reputation could be tarnished, but this book does not take place in 1886, so I was not too worried.

I don’t have any real emotions toward this book, which I think is worse than hating it. If I hated it, that would mean that the authors were able to get a rise out of me. It means that something they wrote deeply effected me for the worse, but a negative reaction is way better than no reaction at all.

I read this book in a few hours, because it is a ridiculously easy read. You open the book and the next thing you know it’s finished. It doesn’t even give you time to form an actual opinion.

Recommended for fans of Twilight Fan fiction and people who loved “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

For more info: Goodreads page and Authors website.