Good Girl Complex ARC Review

Good Girl Complex

Author: Elle Kennedy

Pages: 368 pages

Genre: NA Romance

Published: 1st February 2022

Rating: 5 Stars

Synopsis:

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. 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:

Thank you to NetGalley, Little Brown Book Group and Piatkus for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I fell in love with this book and these characters and could not put it down! This is the first book I’ve read by Elle Kennedy but it makes me desperate to pick up her other series.

Mac is a new student at Garnet College, a place she doesn’t even want to attend but has to in order to please her parents. She is from a wealthy background and has a long-term boyfriend, who expects her to act like the other rich girls and form a plan for their future. All Mac wants to do is drop out of college and focus on her internet business, which is giving her a decent income outside of her parents, so she feels more independent.

‘Maybe we never got the family we deserved, but we ended up with the one we needed.’

Cooper is a townie, one of the locals from Avalon Bay, and is fed up of the rich clones messing things up in his town. Cooper gets fired from one of his jobs, after getting into a fight with Preston, a trust-fund guy, who was trying to corner one of his friends into doing something she didn’t want. After this ordeal, Cooper and his friends realise Preston has a girlfriend, none other than Mac, who is completely unaware of Preston and his constant cheating. They enter into a deal that Cooper can seduce Mac, get her to break up with Preston for him, and then Cooper will break up with Mac in front of Preston to humiliate them both. The only thing is Cooper didn’t expect to actually like Mac and start falling for her.

‘Those two strikes you listed might be strikes in your other world, but here, you and me, we’re exactly who and what we need to be.’

It’s been a while since I read a book with the bet trope in it, but this did not disappoint. Cooper meets Mac in a bar and they immediately get along great. They quickly become friends and Mac starts to realise that Preston may not be the right guy for her. I loved these characters and adore Cooper! I almost wish I hadn’t read it as quick as I did so I could still be reading about them.

‘Come home. I don’t know what I am if I can’t love you.’

If you love New Adult romances and growing tension between two opposites, then this is the one for you! I loved this book and don’t think my review has done it justice, it was a very addictive read, and I became more and more hooked as there was a threat of secrets being revealed.

Keep reading,

Georgia x