Beautiful Bitch

Beautiful Bitch by Christina Lauren is the 2013 second instalment in the Beautiful series, picking up the story of Chloe Mills and her infuriating, irresistible former boss Bennett Ryan after the events of Beautiful Bastard. A novella in format, it closes the gap between where the first book ends and where the couple's story heads next, making it essential reading for anyone already invested in these two.

Chloe's career is finally hitting its stride. The New York launch of Ryan Media Group is eating up every spare hour, and slowing down feels like a personal defeat for someone as ambitious as she is. Bennett, equally career-obsessed but increasingly restless for time alone with her, reaches a limit. The result is an impulsive escape: two plane tickets and a French villa, no negotiation. The Forced Proximity is deliberate this time - his doing - and the Complicated Romance that defined their beginning now has to contend with who they're each becoming outside the office.

The Enemies to Lovers tension that crackled through the first book hasn't dissolved so much as evolved. These are two people who fight as fluently as they flirt, and the Witty Banter & Sharp Dialogue is very much still present. Away from boardrooms and deadlines, though, there's space for something more vulnerable. A conversation neither of them planned changes things. Emotional Vulnerability sneaks in between the heat, and Heat / Spice is never far from the surface in a novella that earns its reputation for warmth and tension in roughly equal measure.

As a Contemporary Romance set against a backdrop of Workplace Romance, the novella works best as a bridge rather than a standalone - rewarding readers who've followed the dynamic from the start. Christina Lauren, the pen name of writing partners Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, bring the same humour and emotional sharpness that made the original so compulsively readable. Short, sharp, and satisfying, Beautiful Bitch gives Chloe and Bennett fans exactly what they came for.