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I started this book on a whim, and that’s because I’ve been reading books of very different genres.
If you’ve seen my previous review of Weight of Blood, then you know how much that book impacted me. I genuinely needed to take a break from that kind of deep fiction and read something much more lighthearted.
So I picked up Beast because, first, I love the cover, and second, I’m always in the mood for a Beauty and the Beast retelling, which is definitely what this book delivers.
It has actually been a very hot minute since I read a biker romance book, and the reason for this is that I find biker romances innately very funny.
It’s very hard for me to take them seriously, and again, immersion is very important to me when I read a book.
But it’s just difficult for me to believe that a group of bikers can have that amount of supreme control over a town and even stretch their influence into other towns as well.
For the mafia, this isn’t a problem, but for bikers? I don’t know. There’s just something about it. The book really needs to be extra spectacular – that is to say, the immersion factor needs to be upped by the author – in order for me to really feel like I can take it seriously.
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Belle and Beast have their first meeting when Beast saves Belle from his stepbrother, and then eventually, he kind of blackmails her into a fake relationship with him – which, to me, wasn’t necessary at all.
I feel that Belle should have known that the fake relationship had too many loopholes to be genuine, and I just didn’t like the fact that that particular plot thread went on for too long.
Eventually, we do find out a very big secret that is basically holding up the entire plot of the book, but even that was neglected, and when it did come up, it felt like it came out of left field, which is something I personally did not enjoy.
I liked the mystery part of things; it definitely kept me very interested. I love it when a romance book not only focuses on the romantic relationship between the main characters but also on an external plot, which this book does in a wonderful way.
This book is definitely very steamy – not family-friendly – and there are a lot of on-page sex scenes. And our male lead, of course, is a dirty talker to rival the best and I absolutely ate it up.
This might be me being a little petty, but I genuinely think there is an unwritten rule that a character should not acknowledge the world they are in unless that acknowledgment pushes the story forward in some way.
So, for example, in a rom-com book, it’s a little odd when the character talks about the romantic clichés happening to them – not in a sarcastic or playful way, but in a very matter-of-fact way. And not even in a way that reveals more about their personality.
In this book, our female lead affectionately calls him biker gangster a couple of times, and I just feel like that was too much.
She really laid it on thick – the fact that he is a biker and an off-chance criminal – and I don’t know, all of it just felt a little too on the nose for me, which ended up making everything related to this particular element feel cliché.
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But again, this did not affect my enjoyment of the book because, as I said earlier, it was a very good read.
Usually, in a romance book, the HEA is signaled by the wedding at the end, but I liked the fact that in this book, the wedding is essentially the tipping point, and it’s from there that the plot really picks up.
I really enjoyed that, but I know that not a lot of other readers feel the same way – at least from the opinions I’ve seen online. But it’s something I appreciated.
All in all, I will say this is a sweet biker romance book with a morally gray protagonist who will do anything for his girl and a romance that is so swoon-worthy.
It’s very steamy, so take note of that in case you don’t like on-page sexual content. But I definitely think you’re going to enjoy it.
