Title: Beautiful Player (Book 3 of the Beautiful Bastard Series)
Author: Christina Lauren
Genre: Romance/Adult
Publication Date: May 29, 2018 (reissued – original date is 2013)
My Grade: B
Format: Paperback
I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. It uses the Friends to lovers trope, but feels natural and not awkward in its pacing. It was a nice change from some of the romance novels I’ve been reading this year that have really awkward pacing or decide to forego a natural feeling plot for more sex scenes.
This book is adult, and has descriptive love scenes so I don’t recommend this for younger readers. However I don’t feel the love scenes override the character development and plot progression (what little plot there actually is) which as I said I’ve been finding happening a lot in this genre. The minor characters aren’t really developed well, but I found out afterwards this is part of a book series so perhaps its assumed that we are aware of the characters already. I feel a little development would have been nice since this series is built on being interconnected novels that you can read individually and not as a series. I’m a bit weary having found out the first book is a revitalized Twilight fanfic (those haven’t turned out to be good reads for me because I never liked Twilight that much to begin with) but I’m willing to give it a chance.
This is the third book in the series, so I might read the other ones since I found this one enjoyable and not overdone. I did find the summary given in some of the advertising was a bit much. The whole “My Fair Lady” comparison is a little thing. I think I might have enjoyed more of the main couple without a focus on each other but then again this is in fact a romance novel so it goes with the genre. My perfect book however would blend a good plot with good romance.
My final grade is a B-. I enjoyed it, but it could be better. Again, it is descriptive so it’s not for younger readers. I may or may not read the other books in the series to get a better sense of Christina Lauren’s writing. I’ll probably skip the first book though. I also feel it could have used a more supportive backlot to frame the romance part of it.
Sokorra Lewis 