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A review by jackiehorne
Good Time Bad Boy by Sonya Clark
4.0
A quiet but immensely appealing December-May romance about a down-on-his-heels country music star and a pulling-herself-up-by-her-bootstraps waitress, who meet when the singer returns to his hometown after one-too-many drunk onstage gigs. Like most country music singers/songwriters, 41-year-old Wade Sheppard is carrying some heavy baggage (only child dead by miscarriage; wrecked marriage; music industry pressure to market and to conform). He hasn't been able to write anything new for years, and is almost falling off the has-been cruise ship/casino touring circuit. After he drunkenly gropes a waitress at the hometown Tennessee bar and gets her fired for fighting back, Wade agrees to spend the summer playing weekends at the bar if the owner will give the waitress her job back.
Twenty six-year-old Daisy's no wilting flower, in need of Wade's rescuing. Having grown up with a drunken mother, and watched her older sister become a single mother at 17, Daisy is determined to make something better of her own life. She's waitressing her way through college, hoping to major in Human Resources and earn herself a middle class lifestyle. Her dream of running her own restaurant is just too risky.
Despite their apparent differences, though, Wade and Daisy have a lot more in common than either of them realizes. Not to mention the scorching hot attraction that flashes between them whenever they start sniping at one another. And so Daisy's determination to stay away from the "good time bad boy" that is Wade gradually turns to a willingness to give a summer fling a try.
What I especially liked about this one was the way it doesn't play the "bad boy who is really good underneath it all" card. Wade is pretty jerky at book's start, not anyone a woman with any sense of self-respect would want to get involved with. But as Wade gradually starts to get his own act together, and to recognize that he used to be something more than the Good Time Bad Boy Daisy labels him, and that he might want to find out if he can still be that something more now, he becomes far more appealing as a romantic interest. Interesting discussions about performing the baring of one's soul via music, as well as intriguing details about the country music industry, add realistic touches to an already winning love story.
Hope Clark, who has written primarily paranormal romance in the past, keeps up with the contemporaries.
Twenty six-year-old Daisy's no wilting flower, in need of Wade's rescuing. Having grown up with a drunken mother, and watched her older sister become a single mother at 17, Daisy is determined to make something better of her own life. She's waitressing her way through college, hoping to major in Human Resources and earn herself a middle class lifestyle. Her dream of running her own restaurant is just too risky.
Despite their apparent differences, though, Wade and Daisy have a lot more in common than either of them realizes. Not to mention the scorching hot attraction that flashes between them whenever they start sniping at one another. And so Daisy's determination to stay away from the "good time bad boy" that is Wade gradually turns to a willingness to give a summer fling a try.
What I especially liked about this one was the way it doesn't play the "bad boy who is really good underneath it all" card. Wade is pretty jerky at book's start, not anyone a woman with any sense of self-respect would want to get involved with. But as Wade gradually starts to get his own act together, and to recognize that he used to be something more than the Good Time Bad Boy Daisy labels him, and that he might want to find out if he can still be that something more now, he becomes far more appealing as a romantic interest. Interesting discussions about performing the baring of one's soul via music, as well as intriguing details about the country music industry, add realistic touches to an already winning love story.
Hope Clark, who has written primarily paranormal romance in the past, keeps up with the contemporaries.