TITLE: Damaged Goods
SERIES: All Saints High #4
AUTHOR: L.J. Shen
GENRE: New Adult Romance
TROPES: Friends to Enemies to Lovers/Football Romance
RELEASE DATE: January 23, 2024
BLURB.
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 clichΓ©. 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?
PURCHASE LINKS.
AMAZON
MY REVIEW.
4 Stars from Tiffany!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Love and Hated it.
Whew! This book took me right back to Vicious! All I remember is he was a character I hated to like, and Bailey was written the exact same way. What a frustrating read this was!
The blurb pretty much explains where our two young characters find themselves at this point in time. Bailey flunking out of Julliard and Lev excelling in football, a sport he wants nothing to do with. Bottom line, if these two had a smidge of a communication skill set, all these problems could have been avoided or at least minimized. However, both were afraid of failing parents and that sends them into a long, torturing cycle that they are way too young for.
“I’ve never felt so beautiful from the outside…and ugly from within.”
Bailey was gross. I hated the way she treated Lev and although she was only a year older, she was a freshman in college and him a high school senior, I still saw him as a kid. He was easily manipulated and has been by her since his mother died when he was fourteen. Lev was a mess and with Bailey as his “best friend” it didn’t get any better. She was a user in more ways than one and it was just yuck.
“Every time you poison yourself, you poison me too. Only difference is I don’t get to enjoy the high. For me, it’s just the lows.”
We go from past to present with this young couple on the worst emotional roller coaster I have read in a long time. At one point I wanted them to cut their losses and call it good. Nobody that young should be dealing with this. Although, I have noticed with this series and a few others I’ve read, these uber-rich kids are young, but deal with very mature situations and this was no exception.
“Bailey and I started out all wrong. Our fairytale turned into a goddamn nightmare.”
The book is well written and a trainwreck from beginning to end. It reads as a standalone with a nice epilogue, however readers will get a better feel of all characters if read in order.
ALSO AVAILABLE.
AMAZON
AUTHOR BIO.
L.J. SHEN is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, and #1 Amazon bestselling author of contemporary, new adult, and young adult romance. Her books have been sold in twenty different countries, and she hopes to visit all of them.
She lives in Florida with her husband, three rowdy sons, and rowdier pets and enjoys good wine, bad reality TV shows, and reading to her heart’s content.
AUTHOR LINKS.
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