Laura’s Review of Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard, #2) by Christina Lauren

If you love Cautious by E.L. Montes, Restoring Jordan by Elizabeth Finn, and Fated by S.H. Kolee then you will LOVE this book!!!!

Basic Summary:  A charming British Playboy.  A girl determined to finally live.  And a secret liaison revealed in all too vivid color. 

                Escaping a cheating ex, finance whiz Sara Dillons’s moved to New York City and is looking for excitement without a lot of strings attached.  So meeting the irresistible, sex Brit at a dance club should have meant nothing more than a night’s fun.  But the manner—and speed—with which he melts her inhibitions turns him from a one-limited hookup and into her Beautiful Stranger.

                The whole city knows Max Stella loves women, not that he’s ever found one he particularly wants to keep around.  Despite pulling in plenty with his Wall Street bad boy charm, it’s not until Sara—and the wild photos she lets him take of her—that he starts wondering if there’s someone for him outside of the bedroom.

                Hooking up in places where anybody could catch them, the only thing scarier for Sara than getting caught in public is having Max get too close in private.

What I Love About This Book:  This book is HOT HOT HOT!!! I thought book one in this series was hot, but this book takes it to the next level.  The book begins with sex with a stranger in a club and it only gets better from there.   There are so many hot scenes in this book it’s really hard to choose which one I enjoyed reading the most.   This book has the write equation of plot and sex scenes, not too many where the book is all about sex, and not too little where you just work up to the scenes and only delivers a couple times.  The plot in this book is great too, I love the torment Max has going on inside his head over his new feelings, and the craziness that Sara experiences realizing just how much she loves him.

                Max Stella is an awesome character, I usually get attached to the female characters in books more than the males but I honestly enjoy him more than Sara.  He’s very light and funny throughout most of the book, but can be serious and sexy when the situation calls for it.  I love his friendship with Bennett and Will, and they crack me up whenever they are together crack me every time.  He just has a way of sucking you in and you immediately want to become president of his fan club.  He has me laughing out loud throughout most of the book.  I love his little tricks he plays to get Sara to have dinner with him and spend more time with him in general.  He probably is my favorite character in this entire series. 

Cons:  I don’t know what it if about Sara but it was kind of hard to just love her immediately.  I felt really bad for because of her asshole ex-boyfriend but she kind of acted like she had a stick up her ass for parts of the book and because of that I don’t love her.  I don’t know a lot of real life people who go around saying I’m conservative and ordinary and because of that I can’t hook up with you.  No one just states that over and over again, they just act that way.  I get that she’s supposed to be like this so you see this evolvement of her as the book continues but I just don’t completely love her.  She’s relatable on certain levels but totally not on some others. 

Overall:  This book is great, and probably for my favorite one in this series.  I love Max and Stella’s chemistry, and it just ignites so quickly and doesn’t die at all.  The pace of the book is great too, there weren’t any lulls and I couldn’t put this story down.  I’ve read it a couple times now because I just love Max so much as a character.  He had me blushing sometimes while reading some of the scenes.  I love that at end of this story, where it’s usually the man messing things up it’s the other way around.  This story is a great lesson not just in love but in trust and honesty, and finding someone who accepts you for everything you are, including your kink.  I love that the passion between these two never dies, or becomes more routine for these two.  Sara and Max are so great together and their experiences just pour off the pages into your heart while you’re reading this book. 

Favorite Scene:  This one was hard to pick from because these two love public sex, and it was hard for me to pick which one I liked the most.  Probably for me the most daring one and the one I totally thought they would get caught at was the New York Public Library.  Thank you Christina and Lauren for being very creative writers with very hot and dirty imaginations!!!