Audio book sneak peek: 'Beautiful Bitch' by Christina Lauren

You know what's cool? Today we get a sneak peek (or sneak listen, as it were) of the audio book of Christina Lauren's new Beautiful Bitch, which picks up where the wildly popular Beautiful Bastard left off. Woo hoo! The audio book, paperback and e-book versions of Beautiful Bitch all arrive tomorrow (July 9), so here's a little something to whet your appetite.

First, Christina and Lauren join us to share their reactions to the audio versions of their Beautiful books:

Christina and Lauren: Ask any author if they still get butterflies reading through their book and most likely they'll wince apologetically and admit, "Not really." Don't get us wrong—there are hundreds of aspects to this whole journey that have made our stomachs drop in excitement. Finding out our books were going to be published? Major butterflies. Holding the hard copy? Definite butterflies. But we've read through each of our books so many times, the swoons no longer hit us the way they did when each book was a new, sweet idea. The funny lines may make us laugh (particularly because we know each other's sense of humor and write things just to make the other smile), but after countless read-throughs and multiple rounds of revisions, the books become so familiar, we can practically recite all the words from memory.

But when we first heard the Beautiful Bastard audio book, all of that changed. From the very first excerpt we listened to we realized: Having the book in print blows our minds, but hearing it read aloud makes it feel brand new.

It's one thing to read the same words we've read a hundred thousand times before. It's another thing altogether to hear someone else putting their own inflection on the words, bringing Chloe, Bennett, Max and Sara to life with their take on the sass, and the heat, and the emotion. We've been so lucky to work with the Simon & Schuster Audiobook Division on all of the Beautiful books, and every single time we listen to one, it's completely surreal. The audio books are able to pull us into the world as readers experiencing the story, rather than writers looking for consistency and flow. For those who listen to audio books — we're new converts — or those who might give one a try, the narrators for the Beautiful series have perfectly nailed the characters we wrote, making listening an absolute thrill. Now, with Beautiful Bitch (our first of three Beautiful novellas out in 2013), we have the voices of both Chloe and Bennett (the audio features male and female narrators). These two characters are just as hot, crazy, and ridiculous as fans will remember them from Beautiful Bastard, but our favorite part about listening in on this one is that we can tell the narrators had as much fun reading it as we did writing it.

And now here's the audio clip (enjoy!):

To find out more about Christina Lauren's books, visit www.christinalaurenbooks.com.