Good Girl Complex by Elle Kennedy – 362 pages
ARC from St. Martins Griffin and GetRed PR for an honest review
Book Blurb:
Mackenzie “Mac” Cabot is a people pleaser. Her demanding parents. Her prep school friends. Her long-time boyfriend. It’s exhausting, really, always following the rules. Unlike most twenty-year-olds, all she really wants to do is focus on growing her internet business, but first she must get a college degree at her parents’ insistence. That means moving to the beachside town of Avalon Bay, a community made up of locals and the wealthy students of Garnet College. Mac’s had plenty of practice suppressing her wilder impulses, but when she meets local bad boy Cooper Hartley, that ability is suddenly tested. Cooper is rough around the edges. Raw. Candid. A threat to her ordered existence. Their friendship soon becomes the realest thing in her life. Despite his disdain for the trust-fund kids he sees coming and going from his town, Cooper soon realizes Mac isn’t just another rich clone and falls for her. Hard. But as Mac finally starts feeling accepted by Cooper and his friends, the secret he’s been keeping from her threatens the only place she’s ever felt at home.
My Review: 3.5 stars
Good Girl Complex by Elle Kennedy has a slew of romance books under her name: from new adult hockey romances to undercover DEA agents. Good Girl Complex takes place in the college-town of Avalon, where the locals and rich-elite who vacation there rub shoulders.
It’s very Outer Banks-esque: rich good girl meets local bad boy. Off the bat, I was very surprised that the main character, Mac, had a boyfriend while starting an emotional affair with Cooper. Cheating–of absolutely any kind–is looked down upon in the romance world and it made me not love Mac’s character as much as I could have, even if her boyfriend was pretty horrible. Like the other Elle Kennedy books I’ve read, the banter between Coop and Mac was sassy, smart, and sexy. And their chemistry was absolutely off the charts.
I loved how Mac was an easy going and obedient girl to her fellow students, her parents, her boyfriend, but with Cooper, she lets loose a wild side with fiery ambitions. He helps her discover that being her own person is more important than being the person other people want you to be. I liked the plotline about her strained relationship with her parents, but at times, it seemed a bit overdone. Kennedy seemed to play into every stereotype of the posh and elite parents in politics with the desire for their daughter to become a stay-at-home mom who serves on charity boards. It felt a little too much at times.
One of my favorite parts about Cooper was his relationship with his twin brother, Evan, and their close circle of friends. At first I was worried there were too many names for me to remember, but seeing the close-knit, protective relationship these friends had made the book more real and added to the small town vibes where everyone knows everything. I loved his character development and his learning that it’s okay to want more.
This was another enjoyable romance from Elle Kennedy. I can’t wait for the sequel, Bad Boy Reputation, which follows the other Hartley twin: Evan.
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