Bad Reputation (Bad Bachelors, #2) by Stefanie London
Series: Bad Bachelors #2
Also in this series: Bad Bachelor (Bad Bachelors, #1)
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: August 7, 2018
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
Point-of-View: Alternating Third
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 379
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Reading Challenges: Rowena's 2019 GoodReads Challenge
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Wes Evans, son of Broadway royalty, just wants to achieve something without riding on his family's coattails. Too bad the whole world is talking about his sex life after the notorious Bad Bachelors app dubs him "The Anaconda." But when he sees a talented ballet dancer, he knows she is exactly what he needs to make his show a success.
Remi Drysdale only had one thought when she fled Australia for New York--never mix business with pleasure again. Ever. She gets the perfect chance to reclaim her career when a handsome stranger asks her to audition for his show. Remi promises herself not to tangle with the guy who holds her career in his hands...no matter how enticing his reviews are on the Bad Bachelors app...
Bad Reputation is the second book in Stefanie London’s Bad Bachelors series and it follows the heroine from Bad Bachelor’s friend Remi. Remi is a ballet teacher whose dream of dancing in a ballet company is dashed by bad decisions and assholes in the company and because of those past experiences, Remi walks away from that culture and those people. She is doing good things for the dance studio that she works for and though she thought she moved on from that life when she gets a shot to dance in a new production, she can’t help but jump right back into the thick of that life.
Wes Evans quit the family business to go his own way. He has plans to start an off-Broadway show and it’s an uphill battle. When he finds his female lead at his niece’s ballet class, things start to look up but something is keeping her from shining in the way that he pictured and so he takes it upon himself to help her get over the mental blocks that are tripping her up. Things are complicated with his female lead because there’s a strong attraction brewing between the two of them and jumping in there is just not in the cards, which sucks for him but it is what it is.
The romance in this book is complicated because the heroine had legit hang-ups about mixing business with pleasure and her hero is part of her business. So I understood her reservations, even supported them but I really struggled with the way that she struggled with her performance on the job. There’s a bit of mystery surrounding the hang-ups she had but they came out in a clunky way that had me rolling my eyes because while I understood that she couldn’t be with Wes because of those hang-ups, not knowing the entire story behind her hang-ups and why it was part of her performance anxiety made me less patient with her performance issues. Does that make sense?
I also had issues with something that Wes does that pissed me off and it was just one more strike against my enjoyment of this book and that’s before we get into the same issues that I had with the whole Bad Bachelor thing. It comes up again and just interferes with Wes’ hard work and the career that he’s trying to build for himself and once again, there was not enough remorse from the owner of Bad Bachelors that I just kept right on being pissed the fuck off. In Bad Bachelor, Reed was getting bad reviews from salty exes but in this book, Wes was getting rave reviews because of his big dick and honestly, that was just gross but the thing that royally pissed me off is that Remi went to the owner of Bad Bachelors and asked her to take a review down that was hurting Wes and could quite possibly cancel Remi’s show. It was a dishonest review and Remi explains all of this and the bitch owner had the audacity to say…no. There wasn’t any evidence that the review was not an honest one and her hands were tied so there’s really nothing she can do. Bitch, you own the damn site. Remi is one of your friends. She is going to lose her job because of your bitch ass app. I’m sorry but if it were my friend, you need that shit gone, it’s gone. No question. I do not give a shit if it was honest or not, if my work is hurting my loved ones, the shit will be gone and I would not give two shits who is pissed off about it because that’s what being a friend is.
Honestly, who the fuck needs enemies when they have friends like this bitch?
Another thing that pissed me off in this book was the so-called friendship between the three heroines in this series. Mainly, it’s the heroine of the third book who is the owner of Bad Bachelors but I didn’t understand why the other two friends stayed friends with her, were loyal to her. In Book 1, she shows her ass and Reed catches her and she doesn’t do enough to make up for the mess that she was responsible for in regards to Reed’s personal life. In fact, she tells Reed and Darcy to keep her secret from Remi because she didn’t trust Remi to keep shit quiet? I’m sorry but those rules don’t apply to your close friends. If you can’t trust that your close friends will keep your secrets, why the fuck do you have close friends? She wasn’t keeping the secret to protect them, she was keeping those secrets because she didn’t trust that they’d keep their mouths shut and that just rubbed me the wrong fucking way. The only thing that I liked in this book outside of seeing Remi fix her relationship with her mother and seeing Wes fix his relationship with his own mother was that in the end, Remi and Bad Bachelor Bitch are in a strained friendship right now. Their relationship should be on the rocks. Bad Bachelor Bitch proved that she doesn’t have your back and you don’t need that kind of negative shit in your life so good for your Remi.
This book wasn’t for me, can you tell?
Grade: 1 out of 5