As always, another read from Elle Kennedy that I loved! I love the story of a character going against expectations and I loved the setting of this one too. Overall, definitely recommend!

The Good Girl Complex by Elle Kennedy knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and accomplishes it exceptionally well. Both the characters and the plot contribute to the narrative. The comparison of the two distinct worlds in this novel is so well rounded and convincing that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

I'm a fan of Elle Kennedy and was excited by the blurb and the prospect of this new book from this excellent author. Unfortunately, I didn't love Good Girl Complex as much as I hoped that I would. I enjoyed it, but there were just things that I didn't connect with.

Cooper is what is consider a "townie" and Mackenzie is a student at the local college. Mackenzie's family is well off and also as a student, she's considered a "clone". While "townies" and "clones" don't usually interact, Cooper has found out that he has a reason to establish a relationship with Mac. The two become friends, and as you can imagine, things end up taking a more romantic turn. The question is, can they overcome all of the issues that rise up to cause friction in the relationship?

While there were things I liked about the book, I had a really hard time connecting with the characters. I wanted to love them and wanted to really care, but for some reason, there was something lacking for me. I wish I could put my finger on why, but I can't. While this wasn't my favorite Elle Kennedy book, it's still well written and I'll check out her future works for sure.

**I voluntarily read an early copy of this title courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review**

This was a good book - a quick read. I think young, college aged women will really enjoy this! As a middle aged women, it felt a bit undeveloped. But I enjoyed it regardless!

This is a rom com for the NA crowd (or those looking for something very light). Mac, a college student and influencer, falls for Cooper, a townie and bartender with a secret about how their relationship started. She's got a worm of a boyfriend in Preston, high pressure parents, and well, a good friend in Cooper. Can their love survive once she knows the truth? No spoilers from but you know......Thanks to netgalley for the ARC.

the synopsis of this book is extremely misleading. the events that take place in this book were a complete surprise. the tropes and the main plot are my least favorite ever, and i would have never picked up this book if i knew it featured them. the hero was cute, but the heroine not so much (she was a annoying). i didn’t feel connected to any of the characters. i did finish it because i love the off-campus and briar u series, so i wanted to give it a chance.

Sassy, sexy, smart banter? Check.
Sweet and decent girl meets tattooed troubled boy? Check.
Super hot chemistry? Check.

Elle Kennedy has done it again! As usual, I love her work, and look forward to rereading this as soon as I get my hands on the physical copy.

Good Girl Complex is a new adult/opposites attract romance by Elle Kennedy and I was so ready for it. I am such a fan of Elle Kennedy’s. In fact, I think her ‘Off-Campus’ series is my all time favorite sports series. When I saw the blurb and cover, I couldn’t wait. Unfortunately, this one missed the mark for me.

Cooper is a ‘townie’ and Mackenzie is a rich student at the local college. The townies and the ‘clones’ don’t mix, but Cooper has a reason for wanting to get Mackenzie to be friends with him. The friendship eventually turns into so much more. But there are tons of obstacles between them, and her money is just a small part of it.

I think my biggest problem with this book is that I found most of the characters unlikable. They had moments that I liked them, but more often than not, not only the main characters but also the secondary characters weren’t great. It’s hard when you don’t love/connect with the characters to love the story. Cooper’s twin brother Evan might have been my favorite. He really grew on me as the story progressed.

Elle Kennedy’s writing is always fantastic and I enjoyed parts of this story, but overall it was just okay for me.

This story would make a lovely beach read. Cooper is a local resident in the small beach town of Avalon Bay. He is also a twin. He has to work several jobs to make ends meet. He is handsome and broody. Mackenzie is a freshman at the local college. She is from a wealthy family. She is only 20 but has already started her own company and made money of her own. A plot for revenge is in the works when these two first meet. Nothing from this point on goes as planned. The story explores family dynamics from both characters perspective. It sees them growing closer together as they realize they have more in common than differences. It is a very smartly written story that allows that characters to fully blossom.

Elle Kennedy is back again with a New Adult romance, this time set in a small beachside college town where the lower class townies are often pitted against the uber-rich students and their families.

After a trust fund student gets Copper fired from his bar job, he decides to get back at him by stealing his equally high-class girlfriend, congressman's daughter MacKenzie. MacKenzie is disinterested in seemingly everything but running her profitable website where girls post embarrassing stories of their boyfriends or exes. Though she knows she shouldn't she is drawn to Cooper and his "bad boy" lifestyle and has to figure out how far she is willing to go to get the life she wants.

I was excited to jump back into Elle Kennedy's fun college worlds again, but from the start, the premise bothered me. The juvenile bet seems better fit for a cheesy 90's rom-com than a modern steamy romance book. Also, I feel compelled to mention that there is cheating in this book by the main characters. And yes, even if the person she is cheating on is scum and also cheating on her, I was put off by that as soon as it came up and it soured the rest of this book for me.

On the plus side, this book has Kennedy's signature charm, banter, and chemistry that was fun to dive into again, but Cooper and MacKenzie both aren't the most likable characters which brought this book down a bit in my eyes, Even though I disliked the bet, I liked Cooper and how he grew throughout the book. However, it was hard for me to sympathize with MacKenzie and her whining about being forced to attend a prestigious college when I am over here drowning in debt from my time in college. I felt for her with her situation with her parents and how she felt they didn't truly understand or loved her. But when she threw a fit about how she didn't feel she needed college since she already ran a website, she lost my support.

It's missing the carefreeness of the Briar U universe but if you are in the mood for a beach side romance, this might be the pick for you,

While I admire that this novel wasn't afraid to discuss real world issues, i.e. poverty and social hierarchy, this was almost too much for a romance story. This book sounded like it would be a charming vacation/beach read, like most romances, yet the first chapter begins with an attempted assault. I'd suggest including a trigger warning. Also, I didn't realize that it was going to be dual perspective. This made it difficult for me to decipher who was who, and the barerage of characters and dialogue didn't help with that. It reminds me of reading the first act of a play with a wide cast of characters.

Reading more like a young adult book than adult fiction, I wasn’t ready going into this one. It was fine, but I found my attention wandering and, I just didn’t care about the main character. She already had everything at such a young age, and I didn’t need to root for her.

I adored Kennedy’s previous series, The Off Campus series, but unfortunately this book was a miss for me and as of so I will not be reporting this review on my goodreads account as I feel I wasn’t able to come to a clear conclusion on how i feel about it. The first half of the book is hard to get into, wether from the characters being hard to like, or the plot itself sometimes being confusing. The second half definitely was better, all the characters definitely grew, but were still not to the extent I would have liked to see. The thing that made me want to really put down the book was the cheating. Even though it was theoretically “ok” due to the other person cheating first, honestly the best situation would have just been to have a really big and dramatic breakup scene rather than… revenge. It very much put me off and did make me not want to finish the book. Other than that it was a decent book, but not up to the standards I have previously thought of the author.

So the MC in this book thinks near the beginning how she doesn't understand how people cheat and why they don't just break up with their partner. And then she cheats? I don't get it. Her boyfriend was horrible yes but she should have done what she threatened. And also that one lie would have been a deal breaker for me. This book was dissatisfying.

Thank you so much to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When I heard that Elle Kennedy was coming out with a new NA bad boy, good girl contemporary romance set in college at a beachside town, I was immediately sold. The story follows Mackenzie Cabot, as she moves to Avalon Bay to go to Garnet College under her parent’s wishes. There, she meets Cooper Hartley, the town’s local bad boy. Coop assumes that Mac is just a superficial, rich girl at first but soon realizes there’s more substance to her. The two become instant friends and continue to grow their connection. However, what Mackenzie doesn’t know is that Cooper is hiding a secret from her that could jeopardize their relationship. Right off the bat, I loved Mac and Coop’s banter. They had such great chemistry. The humor was so good, it had me laughing out loud from the first couple chapters. I honestly couldn’t stop smiling because this book was so cute. And a huge plus, this book is written in dual perspectives. Both Mac and Coop were such well-developed, interesting characters. My favorite scenes were the ones where they’d just spend hours talking to each other, opening up, and being completely vulnerable. I really connected with them because they just felt so real. Not only that, but I loved so many of the side characters as well. The friend group dynamic was so fun to witness. This is the perfect summer read! I loved the beachside vibes in Avalon Bay: the boardwalk/pier, sunsets on the beach, bonfires, festivals, and carnivals. Honestly, the biggest flaw of this book is that there is no epilogue (I NEED MOREEE)!! But it’s okay because the ending did not disappoint at all. It was so adorable, my heart was about to burst. I will say though that the trope/conflict in this book (you find out at the beginning, but I won’t spoil) isn’t my favorite and is VERY MESSY, but it somehow worked in this instance. It’s a little cliché, but I have no problem with that. This book gave me so many butterflies, made me scream, made me laugh, and had me smiling the whole time! 4.5/5 stars!!

If you’re a fan of contemporary romances, especially the good girl/bad boy or poor boy/rich girl tropes, I definitely think you’ll love this one! <3

I am currently obsessed with Elle Kennedy. I read The Deal a few days before picking this book up and didn't expect to be just as much in love with Good Girl Complex. I loved this Outerbanks vibe romance with a "townie" and a "clone". More than anything, I loved watching both Cooper and Mac find themselves and how to do life on their own terms while also finding each other. What started as a revenge bet turned to so much more and while that bet vibe made me so nervous, the pay off was so rewarding.

Avalon Bay is a quaint seaside town populated by locals, or townies, and clones, the rich and insensitive college students that attend Garnet College. Cooper has lived and worked in Avalon Bay all of his life, and the tension between townies and clones is all he knows. That is, until he meets Mackenzie Cabot, picture-perfect 20 year old college student and textbook definition of clone, or so he thinks. There is more to Mackenzie than Cooper is willing to admit, and her friendship soon turns his life upside down. But as soon as Mackenzie and Cooper start to grow close, the secret he has been desperately hiding from her threatens to fracture them both.

This novel felt like a modern-day retelling of Allie and Noah's relationship from Nicholas Sparks' 'The Notebook.' A forbidden love between people born into completely different circumstances, found family, and a relationship that will pull on your heartstrings. I loved that Cooper and Mac came from different dynamics, but still found similarities in their pasts, and the secret that Cooper hid from Mackenzie kept me on the edge of my seat, nervous to flip to the page when it would all be revealed. I loved this book, and I cannot wait until it is published so that I can recommend it to all of my friends!

I'm sad you say that this book and I didn't get along. The premise was promising, but I felt this just didn't bring anything new to the table. It was full of tropes, which isn't bad on its own, but there's got to be something different, and unique as well. DNF'd at 35%.

The is a troupe after troupe book. Wealthy Mackenzie (Mac) Cabot is starting college at in a coastal college town. Her billionaire heir boyfriend is a senior and both are okay with the family plan that says the two will marry. Cooper Hartley, is the tattooed bad boy townie. After losing a bartending job because of Mac's boyfriend Cooper hatches a revenge plot to steal the girl and embarrass the guy. His twin brother Evan and all his friends are in on the plan. Of course the predictable outcome is going to happen.

The author is able to bring more depth to the characters by having both have neglectful parents. Wealth doesn't buy happiness. But so many choices and decision are just eye rolling stupid. I like Mac. She is an entrepreneur, already making her first million while in high school. And I like that she dumps the guy and stands up to her parents. But she has the money to stay in college so I didn't understand why she drops out other to annoy her parents. And the cheating and lies that are common within the friend groups made me cringe. I didn't see much in Cooper to appreciate other than he keeps the puppy. And I really disliked his twin who feels he can dump on Mac because of all the past wrongs the rich kids of done the townies.

This is geared for New Adults who want a steamy, easy romance. I can pick at little things that didn't work for me in the plot but I will just move on. The revenge plot wasn't my cup of tea but others will feel differently. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. (2.5 stars)

This is one of those books that sounded fun on paper, but in practice I just found it too irritating to enjoy. I don't know if it was the marketing copy or my misunderstanding, but I feel like it was just a lot of tropes and cliches that I can't stand, with little else to keep me going. Predictable (in a bad way, not in the usual romance-y comforting way) and trite, but mostly, I didn't like or care enough about either Mac or Cooper enough for the story to work. Unlike most reviewers I've seen talking about this book, I haven't previously read anything by this author, who I was unaware of until I picked this one up on the basis of its cover and synopsis. So I don't know what I should have been expecting, but clearly, I'm not the audience for this, because I just didn't enjoy a bit of it.

Thank you to St. Martin's Griffin for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.