Beautiful Disaster by: Francette Phal

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Review By: 

Lynn Barrett

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Wow...where do I start with this one?  I guess with Ellie Holbrook...She is this sweet and abused girl who got involved with a bad boy.  Ellie is the daughter of strict parents, so when they found out she was pregnant a choice was given...either abort or get out. She made bad choices. What young girl doesn't?  Heroine, evil boyfriend, drugs, but all the while she remained strong and determined.  

Nicholas Grayson...this boy has it all. Daddy issues, mother issues, all kinds of issues...He is an entitled rich boy who has standing bets with his friends, to sleep with every girl in school.  His new mark is Ellie Holbrook, her sunshine and sweetheart of a daughter, may free his tormented soul.  

By the end I was sure that somewhere hell had indeed frozen over and everything would turn out PERFECT....but WAIT...WAIT FOR IT...guess what's coming...that is right an epic twist and all hell breaks loose.  We get all sorts of cliff hangers...I'm angry, furious, and want to hurt someone or something...but I'm not going to tell you what happened next.  All I'm going to say is that if you want to find out you will have to read the book.  

I look forward to getting the next book to find out what happens with Nicholas and Ellie. Book 2 is called Redemption and I will soon have it in my hands.  

Synopsis

They created the game but eighteen year old Nicholas Grayson mastered the rules.

They are young and entitled and utterly bored with their lives, so they play games to entertain themselves. They call it the “bet” and new girl Ellie Holbrook is their latest target. Ellie is not the kind of girl Nicholas dates, but she is pretty enough to be his next conquest and so he sets out to seduce her and claim a nice little prize at the end. But her seduction proves difficult when she openly rejects his advances. In his dogged pursuit of her he slowly finds himself in her small circle of trusted friends and meets her two year old daughter, Sophie.

Life takes a startling turn for Nicholas when he realizes his happiness now lies with the young mother and her daughter. Falling in love with Ellie isn’t something Nicholas ever thought could happen to him and he’s completely frightened at how fiercely she makes him feel. But before he can further examine those emotions and clearly process them, enemies from Nicholas’s personal circle of friends conspire to tear them apart and he must now decide whether their love is worth saving or allow his friends to take away the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him.

Teaser:

Author Bio: 

Francette lives in Massachusetts with her amazingly supportive husband of ten years and her darling two year old son. Reading amazing books has led her to writing and she’s dabbled in fan-fiction before self-publishing her own works. She’s constantly thinking up new stories to write and does her best work when music is playing in the background. Romance is where she’s most comfortable but she hopes to one day venture in mystery novels. She has a weakness for coffee ice cream, tropical fruits and a good glass of wine.

Author Links: 

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6563368.Francette_Phal

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-Francette-Phal/211362229004211

https://twitter.com/FrancettePhal

Review of Monster by Francette Phal

Synopsis: Accidental Gold digger.

Circumstance forced Eden Mercer to sell herself to Dominic Armstrong for half a million dollars and in return she is to play the dutiful wife in public and submit to him completely behind closed doors.

The Tyrant.

Dominic is Ruthless, manipulative and sadistic but Eden is determined not to break under his cruelty. But how does one persevere when in the clutches of a Monster?

3.75 Stars

Review: I was very torn while reading this book. I really, really wanted to like it, and I had been anticipating reading it for several weeks. However, after the first few chapters, I found myself skipping paragraphs and having to put the book down and make myself come back later. I think some of that is possibly due to what I had envisioned the book being about versus what it actually entailed. 

The books starts with Eden married to cruel, domineering, heartless Dominic. They have been married for several years, and he seems to enjoy throwing it in her face that she basically sold herself to him for money. Eden was definitely difficult to like at that point because, while she may have felt financially backed into a hole and forced to marry him for money, she definitely seemed to enjoy being the gold digger that he thought she was. In my head, I think that I was prepared for Dominic to treat Eden very badly, and he definitely mentally and emotionally abused her. Physically, he would humiliate and degrade her by having her dance for his friends and then satisfy him sexually in front of them. While this is bad, this is also keeping in mind that Eden was a stripper when she and Dominic met. I am certainly not excusing any of what either of them did, but, in many ways, Eden also knew what was expected of her when she married Dominic. There is also not a lot of detail to describe what Dominic made Eden do, aside from that one experience. Most of it is just described as what the "Monster" made her do. 

All of that changes, however, when Eden realizes that she is about to break one of Dominic's absolute rules. She enlists the help of a few people and is able to get away from Dominic. I am very glad that she did this, because she was sort of difficult to connect with prior to this. She made many changes in her life and seemed to actually come back to life, in many ways. The book talks about how she had experienced some pretty difficult things, but there is never a lot of detail to describe it, so there was not much for me to latch onto enough to make that connection, at first. She begins to work harder and make positive changes in her life, but it doesn't last. Dominic does find her, and he works things out that she is forced to come back to him. I became interested again at this point, but then this, too, fizzled out. 

Once Eden was back with Dominic, he basically let her call the shots. We do get to see more of Dominic at this point, and what drives him to be the emotionless, distant man that he is - and how heartbreaking that was! However, he, who had previously run over Eden all the time, agreed to everything she asked of him - and this is before he seemed to really care for her. There were a lot of changes that happened to both of them, so I could see how he might change some of his behaviors towards the end, but not as soon as he did. There were not a lot of grammatical errors, but I think the biggest thing for me was lack of details and inconsistency within the characters. I've read this type of book before, such as Underestimated by Jettie Woodruff and Consequences by Aleatha Romig, and both of those have tons of details to help you connect to the characters and the bossy, controlling men are amazing. This one did not quite do the same thing for me. 

Jess

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