Damaged Goods: All Saints High, Book 4 (Unabridged‪)‬

No One Is Perfect, We Can All Fall

I would like to thank Booksprout and Bloom Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Damaged Goods is the fourth book in the All Saints series about the children from the Sinners of Saints series by LJ Shen. Bailey Followhill and Lev Cole were the “good” uncomplicated children of the Sinner’s offspring. They both had older siblings who had been challenging and struggled a great deal. When they were younger, Bailey was the peacekeeping, rule following people pleaser in her family. Despite losing his mother at a young age, Lev was the less complicated son: star football player with the excellent grades. He and Bailey had been best friends from the cradle. At the start of this book, Bailey was away in her first year at Juliard. She and Lev were estranged. She was struggling with failing performance grades, dealing with chronic pain from injuries she was ignoring, and coping with pain medication. Lev was a Senior in high school, the star quarterback, Captain of the football team, with excellent grades and a “girl-something” who happened to look just like Bailey. He was at a party when he received a call out of the blue from Bailey. She was overdosing on OxyContin and needed his help. Next, Bailey arrived back home with her parents, who want her to go to an inpatient drug rehab, but she was denying that there was any need. Lev, who was struggling much more than anyone knew, was determined that Bailey go to rehab and remain clean through his force of will, if necessary. This caused conflict between them, which was heightened by the fact that each were in love with the other, but Bailey had been unwilling to acknowledge it. LJ Shen indicated in her authors note that she did not originally plan this book because Lev and Bailey were boring. Until she could come up with a cause for their pain, their story couldn’t be written. She definitely hit this one out of the park. The two “good” kids were experiencing issues that no one had anticipated and the conflict between them was palpable as was the sexual tension. No person is perfect, and we often make the mistake of assuming that the people who excel at their endeavors will always do so, but no one is bullet proof, as Bailey demonstrated when she left the bubble of protection that Todos Santos afforded her. When we don’t experience adversity as children, sometimes we don’t have the tools to deal with it when transitioning to adulthood. This book is so emotionally charged, fraught with tension and a perfect illustration of the challenge of overcoming drug addiction both for the addict and those who love her. Everyone makes mistakes in the process of dealing with the illness, and Lev made many in his desperation for Bailey to be alright. In the long run, I loved the outcome of this story, not only for Bailey and Lev with their own personal and relationship goals, but also for Lev’s father, Dean, and Knight’s birthmother, Dixie, who made her initial appearance in this saga in Knight and Luna’s story. Bailey and Lev’s love shone throughout their story, even though their relationship was very dysfunctional for some time. If you enjoy dark, emotionally fraught, friends/enemies to lovers contemporary romance stories, then this book, and this series, are for you. Make sure to download from Kindle Unlimited or purchase your copy of Damaged Goods today. It will be worth it.