I'm going to start off by saying that I when I started reading Beautiful Bastard, I had low expectations. I was pretty certain that I was going to DNF it. First, the formatting is awful and I think it was done on purpose. The story is told from Chloe and Ben's 1st person POV. I think the author, in order to differentiate between the character's POV, decided to use formatting as the indicator. Wrong. Move. Chloe's chapters lack punctuation and had weird capitalization. It's distracting and annoying. The author could have just as easily added the character's name at the beginning of each chapter and that would have been fine. The formatting issue was one of the reasons I thought I was going to DNF the book.I'm tired of 1st person POV in erotic romance, especially the heroine's 1st person POV. I need to know what the hero is thinking. Sorry but being inside a woman's head the entire book is boring and we miss out on a lot because of this. When I realized that Beautiful Bastard was told from the hero and heroine's POV, I decided to ignore the wonky formatting and dive into the story.Beautiful Bastard was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed reading it and could not put it down. I think BB is a book you either love or hate. Many folks have strong opinions regarding fanfic and P2P. I've never read fanfic. I have no thoughts or opinions or feelings about it whatsoever. So I started reading this book with the hopes that it would be a good story.I really liked Chloe's character. She's smart, she's tough and she has goals. I was so happy that the heroine wasn't some weak and whiney female that needed to be controlled or rescued by a man. Yay! I enjoyed Ben and Chloe's back and forth verbal jabs. A couple of times, I giggled. Ben and Chloe have a lot of sex. They actually have sex several times at the beginning of the book. This didn't bother me. I loved the hate sex. The one thing that did bother me was the lack of condom use. The issue was addressed further into the story. But after all that unprotected sex, especially in the stairwell, where did Ben's spunk go? Did it magically disappear? Just wondering.Ben and Chloe's "I hate you but I want you" relationship reminded me of Sam and Diane from Cheers, except hotter. It kept the story entertaining and I loved it. The characters had great sexual tension and the sex scenes were plentiful. I would have been happy without an HEA. I think a HFN or nothing for Ben and Chloe would have been more realistic. These are two strong people who butt heads at every turn. It would make more sense that the book would end with them exploring having a relationship instead of declaring love.I really liked Beautiful Bastard. I thought the story was engaging and the characters were entertaining. Again, Beautiful Bastard was a pleasant surprise despite the formatting issues. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the Beautiful series.
