Good Girl Complex
Ratings24
Average rating3.5
*USA Today and Toronto Star bestseller* Full of romance, hijinks, and longing, Good Girl Complex is Elle Kennedy at her very best. She does everything right. So what could go wrong? 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. All she 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. Twenty-year-old Mac has 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.
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3 primary booksAvalon Bay
Avalon Bay is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2022 with contributions by Elle Kennedy.
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I've read one other Elle Kennedy book – The Deal, because I'm a sucker for fake dating – and I doubt I'll read another after Good Girl Complex.
I liked The Deal well enough, but now I think I mostly liked it because it featured tropes I enjoy. Good Girl Complex has tropes I absolutely, positively, do not want to read.
These include:
-Rich/Poor relationship with chips on both characters' shoulders
-Bad Boy/Good Girl
-Not Like Other (Rich) Girls
-Worst of all: they got together because of a bet
I didn't connect to either Mackenzie or Cooper and honestly disliked them both. Mac is a twenty-year-old who doesn't want to be in college because she wants to focus on her million-dollar business, but her wealthy and influential parents want her to get a degree. (Geez, I wonder why I didn't connect to her).
Cooper got screwed over by Mac's ex, and Coop and his friends decide the best revenge is to get his girlfriend (Mac) to dump him for Cooper. One of the friends says it's a horrible thing to do to their credit. But still.
It got to the point in the story where I just didn't want to keep going. You know the bet will blow up in Cooper's face, and they'll break up for a time, then get back together. There wasn't tension? (And then they don't even work through things on screen? It's just “Yup, let's get back together and walk into the sunset without fully discussing the issues that made us break up in the first place.”)
I would have preferred if it dropped the bet plot way earlier in the story and then explored some of the other plot points more: Evan and Cooper's relationship with their mom. More of Mackenzie fixing up the hotel. More of them navigating their relationship instead of the annoying drama that's been done by a plethora of early 2000s teen movies.
So, unlikeable characters (that I think I'm supposed to be rooting for?) and an annoying plot – I'd definitely recommend skipping Good Girl Complex.
Audiobook Review: The narrators were fine. The performances were a little too dramatic for my tastes, however (Like, I was getting embarrassed for the characters and how over the top their thoughts were).
I have been putting this book off for a long time, and now I'm mad at myself for doing so. I've seen mixed reviews on this book, so I think that intimidated me a bit. Maybe I was scared I wouldn't like it
