Review: Beauty by Mary Catherine Gebhard

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Hate Story Duet #2
Release - September 21, 2017
Genre - Mafia Romance
Dual POV - Hero ~ 3rd person/Heroine ~ 1st person
Heat - 4 out of 5
Length - 540 pages

Once upon a time, I thought love was a fairytale.

My prince was a Beast with blood on his hands and ice in his veins. My family offered to save me. The only price: leaving the tattered pieces of my heart behind.

Our love was irrational. Cruel. Unforgiving. Nothing like the storybooks said it should be—but it was perfect.

The longer we were apart, the more I lost myself. He was vicious and domineering, but I craved the submission. Together we were destructive, but I was addicted to the devastation. Still, I thought titles mattered. To my family I was princess, and to the Beast I was slave. I was too naïve to understand that even though he’d been my captor, he’d broken the shackles on my soul.

Once upon a time, I thought love meant happily ever after.

Now I know better.

Beauty is the final book in the Hate Story duet. About what it means to fall in love with the person who has absolutely destroyed you, it contains disturbing and graphic situations that may be a trigger for some.

Find your copy of Beauty here:
Goodreads | Amazon

MY REVIEW

❝ We’d destroyed each other, so together we could rise from the ashes. ❞

Beauty, which is book two of the Hate Story duet, gave me everything I was looking for. There was angst, suspense, murder, mystery, some more angst, hot sex, some more murder, betrayals out the ying yang, and such incredibly fierce yet twisted love. Frankie was determined to learn more about her family through her long-lost grandmother and Beast was busy trying to maintain his hold over the underground, finding a way to defeat the Pavoni family, and figuring out a way to have his Frankie and eat her too.

❝ The Beast had always been lethal, but now… he was mythic. ❞

Frankie and Beast are now on opposite sides and only one family can win. Who will survive? How can they ever be together? And just who in the hell are Frankie’s parents? It felt a little bit like a feral version of Romeo and Juliet, with a lot more descriptive sex and a lot more bloodshed. Destined to be enemies but their hearts beat as one. Their love was inevitable and undeniable and not even a blood war was going to tear these two apart.

❝ My heart cried for him. Beating, bruised, or broken - it would always find him. ❞

Beast was so insanely hot in this book. He was just as deadly as expected, but with his newfound heart, he was also dedicated, loving and protective. I loved getting the chance to further explore this new side of him. I’m just glad it didn’t make him a complete softie. As for Frankie, I must admit she frustrated me with her ignorance and naivete, but then I have to remind myself that she was only 20 years old and had lived a sheltered life. So some of her actions were maybe not relatable, but understandable. However, when she finally came into her own, when she finally became the woman that Beast had glimpsed, I was beyond excited. He had finally found someone to swim in the darkness with him but who also exposed him to the light.

❝ Let’s take what’s ours. Let’s rule together. ❞

MCG has officially found a new fan in me. If this duet is anything to go by, I can’t wait to dive into the rest of her work. I don’t know if I’ll find another hero as amazingly hot as Beast, but I can sure as hell hope.