The beauty and the beast plot is one of my favorites – it is pretty much a given that I will pick up the story if it even hints at it :) And I’m very happy to say that here it works very well.

Phlox is a wonderful heroine. She’s smart and fun, but she’s also got a solid head on her shoulders. She may be gorgeous but she hasn’t always been and she had to go thru a horrible experience where she was burned badly. These things have given her a different take on beauty and other people’s reaction to it, which is a good thing because anyone who dares to fall for Jared needs a lot of understanding and patience.

Jared has carried around a lot of baggage. Not only because of his scars but because of what his father did to his family. It’s colored absolutely everything about his life and he’s still letting it impact his interactions with others. When he first sees Phlox he allows her beauty to impact how he treats her but she doesn’t let him blow her off and he quickly learns there is so much more to her than her face. It’s going to take a lot though to get him to let down his walls. Luckily Phlox may just be the person for the job.

**Warning: there is some spoilerish info below**

I really enjoyed this story but there were a couple of things I didn’t understand. There was a fight between the brothers that seemed to come out of left field because they had what I thought was a good relationship up to that point. Some suggestion was made that there was some undercurrent with how Jared saved Jake from the fire, but either I didn’t get it or it wasn’t detailed enough to make the impact needed for that fight to make sense to me. And then the deal with their dad wasn’t ever really resolved. An argument could be made that Jared just needed to accept and let it go but I felt like closure really was needed for him to truly heal.

Overall though the rest of the book worked really well for me and I loved the romance that developed between Jared and Phlox. It’s a tough go for both of them but Gabriel handled their troubles very well and gave them a great HEA.

(Complimentary copy provided in exchange for an honest review)