Damaged Goods
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
From L.J. Shen, the USA Today bestselling author of Pretty Reckless, comes a brand new book in the All Saints series.
Underneath the goody two-shoes persona is damaged goods…but can the bad boy across the street save her?
Bailey Followhill is the perfect daughter. Sweet. Charitable. Pretty. Control freak. Not a hair out of place, not an inch out of line, she is everything her troublemaking sister Daria isn't. But when her A game turns out to be a lukewarm C- at Juilliard, Bailey's picture-ready life starts fraying faster than the worn satin ribbons of her pointe shoes. She's becoming a piece of gossip. The Troubled Child. A drug abuser. No longer the girl her best friend once knew.
Lev Cole is so golden, he's got the Midas Touch. Prized quarterback. Football captain. Hottest guy in SoCal. A textbook cliché. But with a girlfriend he doesn't love and a career path he doesn't value, Lev is coasting.
The only two things he cares about, Bailey and becoming a pilot, are out of reach.
But Lev is done being satisfied with the life others have chosen for him. He wants to pick his own cards. To demolish the seamless kingdom of lies his family stitched together on the ruins his mother left behind.
The question is, can he save his best friend and his dream before too much damage is done?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Trauma, addiction, love, and sexual exploration collide in this dark and over-the-top friends-to-lovers romance from Shen (Vicious). Aspiring ballerina Bailey Followhill has always been a "good girl" but she falls from the ivory tower of Julliard after a failed midterm in dance composition and a night in the emergency room after overdosing on fentanyl-laced pain meds. She's sent home to California as the college launches an investigation into whether they'll allow her back, and, in the anxiety of the waiting period, she becomes increasingly dependent on drugs to cope. It gets to the point that local golden boy Lev Cole, a talented football player and Bailey's best friend and childhood admirer, can barely recognize the girl he has always dreamed of settling down with. Bailey's mother, rightfully concerned, trusts Lev to watch over Bailey on nights when she cannot. Despite Bailey's erratic behavior, the sexual tension between her and Lev is as strong as ever, leading to some steamy and intense love scenes. The plot feels jumpy, the heavy issues aren't particularly well handled, and the sappy dialogue doesn't feel true to either of the characters and may make some readers cringe. The sex is undeniably hot, but everything else falls flat.
