Fatal Beauty is not at all a romance in the typical way you might expect. Indeed, if there is a romance in this book, it is between the two heroines, there really is no M/F romance though there is a great deal of M/F sex. Please note, there is also F/F sex. When the book opens up, you can’t really help but to be intrigued. We meet two bored rich girls, Charlie and EJ, with very different outlooks on life but an affinity for drug dealing….So yeah, that’s intriguing. From the beginning of the book the author focuses on the development of the relationship between Charlie and EJ. When Charlie’s picture perfect existence starts to crumble, she calls on EJ and that begins a very very crazy ride. To get a picture of what you’re getting with this book think Bonnie & Clyde meets Thelma & Louise. Eventually Charlie and EJ find themselves on the run and things get….complicated.
Ok, the good news is EJ’s character. EJ was one of the most complex characters I have encountered. Her mixture of hard as nails tough and aching vulnerability was perfect. I understood the relationship between Charlie and EJ more from EJ’s POV than from Charlie’s. The entrance of Jacobs in the story was kind of the beginning of where things started to get a bit too complicated for me. EJ has a long complicated history with Jacobs but he’s the guy you call when you want to get rid of a body and so EJ calls him when she and Charlie find herself in that situation. From the point where Jacobs enters the story, the book starts to take on a “stream of consciousness” writing feel. This issue is compounded by the rapidly switching POV’s and time hops without any sort of explanation or dividers. I just didn’t get the sense that the author had an actual plot plan, it very much seemed like the story was being created on a page by page basis. That can be ok but in this case it led to a very disjointed feeling in the story. I didn’t understand why choices were being made by the characters in the way that they were.
One very good example of how the book kind of stops connecting all the dots for you came when Charlie and EJ decided to stay with Jacobs. I just didn’t get how that would not look suspicious under the circumstances or how it was ok for them just to disappear from their lives. Another example, why EJ thought her plan to get revenge on Jacobs was workable is beyond me. I didn’t even understand why she would’ve wanted to do something like that.
I also wasn’t a fan of Charlie or EJ. They are not the kind of characters you really root for. They are rich and mean. In reality, they only care about each other and would literally blow the rest of the world up without a backwards glance.
If you are into the action, suspense genre and you don’t mind a F/F romance with lots of M/F sex and what-not thrown in, this book might be for you. I’m not that kind of reader so this wasn’t really the right book for me.
**ARC provided by InkSlinger PR**
Purchase: | Amazon |
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