Review: The Beau & the Belle by R.S. Grey

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Although the blurb made it seem exciting and promising, The Beau & the Belle was definitely a miss for me. The plot was poorly executed and the romance felt weak. It’s marketed as a “romantic comedy” but seriously lacked any humor.

The book is told in two parts, the past and the present, and has alternating POV’s. The premise of the story is that Lauren meets Beau when she’s 17 years old and he’s renting a place from her parents. He’s a 24-year-old law student. Julia develops some sort of a crush on Beau. The blurb mentions that Beau did something to break her heart, which causes them separate.

That is false and misleading. It’s not as dramatic as the blurb made it out to be. A natural disaster separates the two and ten years later they meet again. This time both of legal age.

The main issue that I had with The Beau & the Belle is that I didn’t understand why these two characters wanted to be together. When Lauren was a teen, I understood that she thought he was attractive and developed this massive crush on Beau.

However, what made her hold that interest as the years go by? She really didn’t know anything about him. And because of this, I felt like she just had a silly little crush on him. They had one dance and suddenly they couldn’t stop thinking about each other.

Also, what did Beau find so interesting about Lauren when she was a teen and an adult? I did appreciate that he did not act on his feelings when she was underage.

The fact that these two characters meet ten years later and still are obsessed with each other, felt confusing and annoying. It went from forbidden territory to “Let’s date. Now.”

It’s hard to root for a couple when you’re not entirely sure why they should be together in the first place. Lauren and Beau felt like a two dimensional couple and they only reason they needed to get together was only because the plot needed them to be together.