REVIEW: Good Girl Complex by Elle Kennedy
Dear Elle Kennedy,
I was so excited to read this book. It was one of my most anticipated books of the early part of the year. (I usually enjoy your books; something about your writing style just works for me.)
I did enjoy Good Girl Complex but it was not my favourite of your books, mainly because I struggled with the premise.
Mackenzie Cabot is a wealthy 20-year-old who moved to Avalon Bay in the Carolinas to attend Garnet College. She had agreed to attend after pressure from her family who had resisted her having a gap year after high school. Mackenzie used her gap year to work on her app and websites – “BoyfriendFails” and “GirlfriendFails” – both sites where people report their relationship disasters for clicks and comments. Mackenzie has already made more than a million dollars from these endeavours and has no interest in college but a deal’s a deal.
Cooper Hartley is a “townie”. A local from Avalon Bay, who, along with his twin brother Evan, works with his uncle Levi in his construction business. When the book begins, Cooper also has a night job as a bartender. He gets into an altercation with a “clone” (the derogatory name the locals give to the wealthy students and summer visitors who have a lot of history of treating the locals very poorly) who gropes waitress and friend, Steph. That particular clone is Preston – Mackenzie’s boyfriend. He’s a cheating piece of dirt but Mackenzie is oblivious to it.
Cooper is fired at Preston’s insistence and Cooper and his friends hatch a revenge plan: Cooper will romance Preston’s girlfriend away from him and then rub it in his face.
It is a truly mean and juvenile plan and it’s far from my favourite trope. Revenge, especially in contemporaries rarely works for me. I went into the book knowing that it was about a rich girl who falls for a boy from the “wrong side of the tracks” but I wasn’t expecting the “make her fall for me to hurt her boyfriend” part of the book and when I realised that’s what it was my heart dropped. It’s not only not my favourite, it feels kind of old and tired to me. I hoped for a twist on the trope to make it feel a bit fresher but it did not eventuate.
Still, I do enjoy your writing and I liked Mackenzie and even Cooper (when he wasn’t being an ass to someone who had done him no harm) so I kept going. To his credit, Cooper very quickly falls for Mackenzie and abandons the plan but it is nonetheless the central conflict of the book so I spent the last bit kind of peering through my fingers as I read, waiting for it all to go horribly wrong.
There is a HEA of course – this is a romance after all but the ending felt very abrupt and I would have really liked more.
I enjoyed the snap and sizzle of the chemistry between Mac and Cooper. I liked that the group of friends were not perfect and that one in particular was presented with more nuance than initially appeared would be the case.
Cooper, once he sees Mac as a person and not a clone (which, as I said, doesn’t take him long) is supportive of her in a way she’s never experienced from her tosser of a boyfriend and from her controlling parents. Unlike Preston, Cooper doesn’t think of Mac’s business ventures as her “little tech thing”. He’s impressed and not threatened by it (which, to be honest, could have used a little more exploration).
“I built that website. BoyfriendFails. Which spun off to GirlfriendFails.”
“Wait, for real?”
She shrugs. “Yeah.”
Holy shit. “And you made all this money from that?”
Another embarrassed shrug. It confuses me, because what is she so shy about?
“Mackenzie, that’s badass,” I inform her.
“You don’t think it’s stupid?” She looks at me with these big, hopeful green eyes. I’m not sure if I should feel like a dick that she thought I’d judge her for this.
“Hell no. I’m impressed. When I was twenty, I was still burning mac and cheese.” I mean, I’m still burning mac and cheese.
Cooper and Mackenzie have more in common than they don’t, no matter what the surface of things may look like.
It’s clear that Good Girl Complex is the first in a series. Cooper has a big group of friends and a reasonable amount of time is spent on setting up their various dynamics so I have a sense of where the series may be going and who might be next to be in the spotlight. I’m here for it. I liked the way the friends bantered together and for the most part I liked them all. Even the “villain” of the group had more to her than met the eye and I appreciated, mostly, the way that ended up playing out. I especially adored Bonnie May Beauchamp and sincerely hope she will bob up again in the series because she was a hoot. Wyatt and his girlfriend trouble and a ludicrous thought experiment was also a lot of fun.
There were some side stories about Cooper’s family, his career plans and about Mackenzie’s next venture that I would have liked more detail about – I wonder if they will feature in Evan’s book perhaps? There was definitely a fair bit of sequel bait with some things being mentioned or set up with no real resolution here, others a little glossed over.
Ultimately, what saved the book for me and made it an overall win was that writing style I like so much and the characters which went a long way to overcoming the barrier I had about the revenge storyline. For readers who don’t have that same barrier, I think the book will work much better.
Grade: B-
Regards,
Kaetrin
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I’m glad to see the story redeeming itself from the original conflict. I would not care for a revenge plot either. The dialog you shared is fun and maybe I’ll take a closer look at this. Thanks for the review.
I just finished this today and I was a little disappointed in the ending. It was dragged out until the very end, and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, but I got to the point where I felt like maybe there would be some other less obvious resolution to the central conflict. So I was disappointed to find that it was very rote at the end.
Other than that – I liked it. Very likable heroine, okay hero, probably a B verging on B+.
Thanks for the review!
@Darlynne: I’m glad I’m not alone re my feelings about the premise but there is a lot to like about the book regardless.
@Jennie: I really wanted it to be more subversive. I would have been delighted by that.