Review: Endearing Characters - Sweet Story!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 26, 2014
Brooke Mills is the town bad girl who has always dated the town bad boys.  Adam Branigan is an adorable nerd who is in a vulnerable and high profile position as the elementary school principal.  Adam first sees Brooke as she petulantly kicks a rebellious trash can.  Brooke first sees Adam as he witnesses her shouting match with her on-again off-again boyfriend and all around bad boy, tattooed rocker Chet, who has just informed Brooke that as a girlfriend… she isn’t worth the trouble. Following a familiar pattern, Brooke has a disastrous and forgettable  first night with Adam and despairs that she will ever be able to attract anything but bad boys.  She confides in her friends that she needs a rule book for catching a good guy and as Brooke performs her magic on their hair, her friends Leah and Lindsay perform their magic on her life.  Readers will smile as Brooke and a very cooperative Adam try to conform to the rules set out by her well-meaning friends. Bad Girlfriend is the fourth book in author Kirsten DeMuzio’s First and Last series.  Each of the four books focuses on one couple and as the series goes forward, the couples introduced in previous books reappear in the new stories.  This book can be read as a standalone, but the back stories in the first three books about the other couples are definitely worth reading.  Even though the story line is somewhat predictable casting Brooke in the role of the abandoned child who has chosen an unhealthy path to love and acceptance with Adam as her knight in shining armor, the author offers enough of a twist on the theme with “Leah & Lindsay’s Rules for Dating” to keep the story fresh.  Of course, every good story has conflict and Brooke is not the only one who must deal with the past.  Adam is haunted by his own “bad girlfriend” as well as the actions of the principal who previously held his job. Of the four couples introduced in Kirsten DeMuzio’s series, the pairing of Brooke and Adam is my favorite.  Both characters are endearing and the story is written with sweetness and humor.  Kirsten DeMuzio has a writing style which I think is a cut above many of the other offerings in this genre.  It is refreshing to be able to focus on the story itself rather than how it could have been written better.  Fans of Safe With You, Just One Reason and Fourth Down should enjoy reading Brooke’s and Adam’s story along with the opportunity to visit with the characters from the previous books.