Review: Good Girl Complex by Elle Kennedy
Thank you St. Martin’s Press for my copy of Good Girl Complex! All thoughts are my own.
I so wanted to love this book. I saw the cover and immediately requested. I read Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus series and fell down the rabbit hole of those hockey boys so quickly. But I think ultimately I was really turned off by this book. The stereotypes were STRONG, the writing not great, and I didn’t really love any of the characters. Kennedy writes pretty heavily from the male gaze but I didn’t find Cooper to be as charming as the Briar U guys. And while I appreciated the journey Mackenzie went on, I just didn’t love the rich girl stereotype. I didn’t feel called to pick it up!
Synopsis:
“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.” —NetGalley
What I Liked:
The Setting—I love a good New Adult/College age romance, even though I’m not in college anymore. I liked the setting of a prestigious university and the town around it. It felt summery and fun, plus it felt a lot like Charleston, which is one of my favorite places.
The First 30%—I was into the book when it first started! But then I became less and less interested and didn’t feel called to pick it up.
What Didn’t Work:
The Tropes—The rich girl/townie guy trope is normally one I like but it was just so aggressively used that I was distracted by it.
The Pacing—Like it said, the pacing in the beginning was so great and then things petered out. I would have liked to see a little more tension between Cooper and Mackenzie before they admitted their feelings.
The Side Plots—There was just so much going on between Cooper’s “townie” friends and his mom showing up towards the end, plus the initial dare/bet on top of Mackenzie’s issues with Preston and her parents. It was just a lot.
Content Warnings:
Infidelity; Fighting; Alcoholism; Sexism; Misogyny; Death of a Parent; Drug Abuse; Estranged Parental Relationships