Beauty and the Bookworm by Nick Pageant

Hey everyone,

I mainly brought Beauty and the Bookworm by Nick Pageant for the title because I can't resist reading books about bookworms. Also I love opposite attracts stories Mason and Shane are as different as chalk and cheese!

The book:

Mason Leery is a bookworm and he thinks he might just be able to get through life simply by reading about it instead of living it.

Until he meets Shane Beaumont. Shane is the opposite of Mason in every way, he's beautiful, athletic, and lives his life to the fullest.

Sparks fly when the polar opposites come together, but it will be up to the bookworm to shut down his e-reader and go after the beauty if he wants to love someone outside the pages of a book.

My Thoughts:

Beauty and the Bookworm is based around the concept of opposites attracting, which is incidentally one of my favourite tropes, and I thought it was a good book. I enjoyed the character of Mason with his hilarious inner monologue was hilarious that had me laughing out loud numerous times. It earned me some very strange looks from my family. Mason is cute, funny, socially awkward, a complete bookworm as the title suggests and just a tiny bit crazy. Due to a series of events he attracts the attention of Shane Beaumont, a sporty, health conscious, good guy who’s just a little bit kinky.

“Who hasn’t declared their interest for someone they really aren’t interested in when they were chemically compromised?”

Mason and Shane were a cute couple, the secondary characters were funny and interesting (particularly the grandmother she was awesome), however, I didn’t love this book. Don’t get me wrong I liked it, I thought it was funny and the author had a good voice I just wish it had been longer. I wanted more time with the characters; I wanted to really get to know Mason and Shane, particularly Shane. For me it felt like they went from strangers, friends, lovers and loved-up couple extremely quickly. For a light-hearted and quick read this was an extremely good contemporary MM romance, I just wish Nick Pageant had added another 100 pages so that I could have become truly invested in the characters.

“Are you and Twyla looking at houses today?”

“Yeah,” I said, "I hope she finds one soon”.

The other issue I had with the book, Shane was almost too nice. He was just so understanding about everything, but I won’t go into details because I myself hate spoilers, however, I found it all a little unrealistic. I loved Mason and Mason’s grandmother and it was fun watching him get his HEA I just wish Shane had been a more three-dimensional. As a character he didn’t feel real and I struggled to connect with him. Overall I liked this book, I loved the character of Mason and the humour, I just felt let down by the character of Shane and the general lack of depth or character development.

My rating:

Happy reading everyone and see you next time!