Book Review
Title: Beneath the Beauty (Beauty #2)
Author: Skye Warren
Genre: Erotic/Romance
Rating: *****
Review: This is my first time reading the second book in this series and I am excited, although I did make a mistake in my review of Beauty Touched the Beast by saying there was 3 more books in the series when actually there is 4. Beneath the Beauty opens two weeks after the end of Beauty Touched the Beast as Blake is being headhunted for an Associate Professor position at his old university but he has consistently turned it down until Erin convinces him it is a good idea even if it means temporarily leaving her behind. While their relationship is still new and is suffering from those strange thoughts people have in a new relationships, their personalities compliment each other. However, Blake has PTSD and is haunted nightmares from his time as a soldier which is something that Erin doesn’t fully understand but she doesn’t push him for information that he isn’t willing to provide but she does make sure he is taking care of himself, like telling him off for not sleeping as he should.
Very quickly after Blake enters his role as a Professor, on the same campus where Erin studies things get even more complicated than the first book. It turns out that another Professor Melinda Jenkins, is Blake’s ex-fiancé who left him after the explosion that scarred him and she wants to get back together with him but Blake sees right through her and refuses as he has found something with Erin he never thought he would have, however, his ex is cunning and smart and just might pose more of a problem than either Erin or Blake anticipated. Meanwhile, Erin is struggling to cope with this revelation as Blake has never mentioned having a fiancé or who she was, on top of that her mother needs surgery on her knee but can’t afford it and Erin is going to do everything she can to provide for her own family which means that Blake might have to take a back seat while she finishes school and finds a job that could pay for her mother’s surgery and support her in the time she would be out of work.
Erin attempts to go to Blake’s and get some answers from him but when she arrives Melinda is already there, wearing Blake’s clothes and eating the Chinese they normally order and for a moment Erin thinks he has gone back to her and left her behind. Defeated she heads home, only to find Blake waiting for her and he is clueless about Melinda being at his place and is going to do something about it. Here, Erin and Blake have a heart to heart where he tells her about his relationship with Melinda and why it ended so badly and she tells him about Doug, her ex, who abandoned her after finding out her mother was their ex-housekeeper, his father says that her mother stole from them but Erin is more inclined to believe her mother who says that Doug’s father came on to her and Erin believe that he might have raped her before throwing her away like trash. While there is a sex scene here it doesn’t really impact the scene as Blake and Erin both open themselves up truly to the other and while Erin doesn’t fully understand the impact Blake’s time as a soldier and his injury have had on him, she is patience and waits for him to volunteer the information rather than pushing for. Overall, Beneath the Beauty was a brilliant second installment and I have to say the relationship between Blake and Erin is one of the most realistic I have seen in a erotic fiction novel.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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