Bad Boyfriend by K. A. Mitchell

Bad Boyfriend by K. A. Mitchell

My Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸

Buy Links: Amazon | Google Play | Abe Books | Indie Bound

Blurb:

Causing trouble has never been more fun. 

Eli Wright doesn’t follow anyone’s rules. When he was seventeen, his parents threw him out of the house for being gay. He’s been making his own way for the past five years and he’s not about to change himself for anyone’s expectations. For now, romance can wait. There are plenty of hot guys to keep him entertained until he finds someone special. 

Quinn Maloney kept the peace and his closeted boyfriend’s secrets for ten years. One morning he got a hell of a wake-up along with his coffee. Not only did the boyfriend cheat on him, but he’s marrying the girl he knocked up. Inviting Quinn to the baby’s baptism is the last straw. Quinn’s had enough of gritting his teeth to play nice. His former boyfriend is in for a rude awakening, because Quinn’s not going to sit quietly on the sidelines. In fact, he has the perfect scheme, and he just needs to convince the much younger, eyeliner-wearing guy who winks at him in a bar to help him out. 

Eli’s deception is a little too good, and soon he has everyone believing they’re madly in love. In fact, he’s almost got Quinn believing it himself….

Review:

The funny thing is, this book is the second in the series.  I read it first, because I’m a freaking rebel, and I liked Eli (with some caveats, see below.)  When I read the first book in the series, I absolutely hated Eli and wanted to strangle him with his own skinny jeans.  I had the same issue with Christa Tomlinson’s The Detective’s Pleasure, which is one of my favorite romances of all time and the one I go back to when I want to soothe my brain. 

I guess that’s one of the signs of a great author, right?  Someone who can take a character who is unsympathetic in one context and make him the absolute hero in another.  It’s something I’d like to try at some point. 

Anyway, what Mitchell does with both of these characters is make me identify with them when the scene is from their point of view, completely and totally.  When the scene is not from their point of view, I find myself looking at them with a much more critical eye.  In general, I liked Quinn much better than I liked Eli, but I’m closer to Quinn in age and he was specifically wronged on the page in this story.  (Not by Eli, don’t worry.)  He’s easier for me to identify with on a number of levels.

But Quinn has his issues.  I found him to be controlling in more than a few instances, which made me recoil once or twice.  At the same time, he lets his ex do a lot of things that seem a little doormat-ish, to the point where I’d reconsider the target for the affore-mentioned skinny jeans homicide. 

Eli is a messed up guy.  It’s easy to see where poverty and fear have affected him.  It’s hard for me to write now, with the additional knowledge of him from book one, and not have that bias me.  At the same time, maybe it was a little easier for me to read him in the other book knowing more of his backstory. 

My biggest concern with Eli was the extent to which his circumstances were driving the decisions he made.  He tried not to let that happen, but it was still hard for me to believe he wasn’t making decisions based on his financial situation.  And hey, I get it, I’m not going to say I haven’t, but I guess I worried for him. 

I still loved the story.  These two characters make a choice, and I don’t think it’s a great choice, but it leads them to happiness and makes the bad guy miserable.  And I’m a big fan of the bad guy being miserable. 

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