Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard #2)by Christina Lauren
Summary: Escaping a cheating ex, finance whiz Sara Dillon’s moved to New York City and is looking for excitement and passion without a lot of strings attached. So meeting the irresistible, sexy 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-time hookup and into her Beautiful Stranger.
The whole city knows that 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.
Source: I purchased a Kindle copy
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Review:
I liked Max a lot. He was nonchalant, nice, and refreshing. I kind of hate stuffy billionaires and I have no idea why I keep picking up these terrible books, but Max didn’t fit the stuffy billionaire mold quite like the other leading guys of this genre.
I like books like these to have a good storyline, but what I liked about Beautiful Bastard was that it was to the point. I think Beautiful Stranger had a great plot and I liked the chemistry between Max and Sara, but it started to get redundant. I don’t know.
I’m starting to think that I should just stop reading these types of books. Max was cool, his relationship was Sara was all taboo and the stuff of fantasies, what with the photos and the sex near/in public and I get that a lot of people have these fantasies. But to build an actual romance around it just gets dumb to me. There’s always unnecessary conflict and miscommunication and I’m not impressed when I know that they will fall in love, have a fight, and then get back together.
When it comes to this type of fiction, I read the first books and that’s it. Maybe my problem stems from the fact that this isn’t the first and it’s essentially the same type of story as all of the others, as the first book, with different characters and fetishes.
Don’t take my word for it. I have no business reading these kinds of books. I like steamy romance, but I just can’t do the unnecessary conflicts and the jumping into bed and falling in love kind of storylines without any substance.
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As with Bared to You, if I were to compare this to Fifty Shades, it would have 5 stars. These types of books aren’t good, but at least these are fairly well written and not annoying. I maintain that Fifty Shades is the worst. I have no idea why similar books keep popping up left and right, and while that’s aggravating, I am also glad because all of them are a million times better than Fifty Shades. If people are reading smut, they deserve for it to be written better.
