Mr. Beautiful by R.K. Lilley

Well…this novel was remarkably meh.

What’s it About?

I’ve been remade four times in my life. It is a distinct feeling. Impossible to mistake. The very marked sensation of being unraveled and reknit into a new thing, a new person. It can be good or bad, helpful or harmful, but above all, it is unstoppable. I was remade when my parents died, went from a happy childhood, into navigating a very dark world, with endless responsibilities, surrounded by enemies, and despairingly alone.

It happened again at the hands of a cowardly predator. I’d become angrier with that one, more cynical, and it undoubtedly turned me into the kinky f**k I was today. The third happened swiftly. One day I looked up into a pair of pale blue eyes and saw the other half of my soul. Checkmate. I went from a completely controlled existence, a life where I made every decision with cold calculation, to a man overcome with feelings and emotions that were foreign but somehow wonderful. And all too soon after that cataclysmic change was this fourth one, this one where I begged a God I’d never entertained to spare the life of a woman that I could not live without.

First Impressions

Whenever we have a novel in a series that describes events from previous books from the man’s point of view, I feel like two things are bound to happen. Either we get a secret and revealing glimpse of the emotional side of the male character that we wish we’d had when the first books came out, or we get a basically pointless retelling of what we already knew. Unfortunately, I felt like this book fell into the latter category. We don’t really discover anything new when it comes to the relationship between James and Bianca. We always knew he was a possessive alpha male, and that they were both into BDSM. There’s really nothing else to reveal.

Another Male POV

The one aspect of this novel that I really enjoyed was seeing things told from Stephan’s perspective, not to mention the start of his relationship with Javier. If anything, I wish the entire novel had just been told from Stephan’s point of view, starting with how he left home after coming out to his parents, living on the streets with Bianca, and finally finding love and happiness with Javier. By alternating POV’s between James and Stephan, I felt like we didn’t get the full side of Stephan’s story, and instead there was just more rehashing of events we were already aware of. I personally felt that Stephan deserved a book of his very own!

Travel Through Time

So, I obviously wasn’t a huge fan of reading things from James’ POV, but the main aspect of this book which reaaalllly got on my nerves was the constant switching back and forth between past and present. One minute we are picking up from the end of book 3, then jumping back to when James and Bianca first met, then jumping forward to their wedding day, then jumping back even further for a brief scene of James’ first ever trip to a BDSM club. Combine this with the alternating POV’s between James and Stephan, and the fact that Stephan’s story line is also constantly jumping between past and present, and it was damn near impossible to keep anything in a sense of chronological order.

Series: Up in the Air, book 4.

Should you read it? Personally, I don’t think it’s necessarily worth reading. The first 3 books in the series were good enough, and I felt like this novel didn’t really add anything of substance to the series. If you do read it, I’d actually just recommending reading Stephan’s chapters!

Smut Level: These two definitely take BDSM to the next level. There’s not so much a joy of spanking as a form of punishment, but rather solely for the feeling of pain mixed with pleasure.

Get it on Amazon: Click Here. $6.99 Kindle Price. Self-Published. 390 Pages.