Damaged Goods by L.J. Shen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Underneath the goody two-shoes persona is damaged goods…but can the bad boy across the street save her?
Damaged Goods
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 cliché. 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?
Back in Todos Santos!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💚🖤💙💖
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 😄😮🙂🥰😍
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration
The heroine: Bailey Followhill – she has always been the good girl in her parents’ eyes. She has wanted to be a ballerina since she was five years old. She has been attending Juilliard since the beginning of this year, and she is doing well in all her academics, but has been failing her dancing classes. She has fractures in both legs and in her back and has been self medicating to deal with the pain. When she overdoses, everyone in her life is surprised because she has always been so perfect.
The Hero: Lev Cole – he is a year younger than Bailey and is the captain of the football team of All Saints high school. He has been casually seeing Talia, who happens to look just like Bailey from the back, though she knows she can never have his heart. He and Bailey had been in love and best friends since they were young, and even though everyone expected them to be together romantically, they never were. Lev is good at football and his family expects it of him, though what he really wants is to go to join the air force and become a fighter pilot.
The Story: When Bailey returns to Todos Santos after her overdose, everything is changed. She used to be the most successful girl, her parents’ pride and joy and now she is acting differently, possibly going through withdrawals and lying to everyone about what she has been going through. Lev is at a loose end as to what to do with her.
I love the whole Todos Santos world, and this book has a lot of references to all of our favorite residents, such as Melody, Dean, Vicious, Trent, Knight, Vaughn and more. The love story of Bailey and Lev is a strange one since they had been best friends for so long and it was obvious that they loved each other, though both of them slept with different people while they were apart. They were never actually together before she left, so it isn’t technically cheating, but they did love each other, so it kind of is.
I have to say though, as much as I love the characters in this world. This book was a bit too depressing for my tastes. Too much of it was about Bailey denying that she is an addict and trying to find some drugs to take. She is in pain and tells herself that she really wants to practice ballet to get back to Juilliard and the only way she can do that is to take the drugs to dull her pain. The love between the two of them shines through the whole story though and it is both sweet and steamy.
“It looks like he stuffed an entire baloney into his boxers.”
This one went to places I never expected. It got deep and emotional and was so high school at times and so adult at others. There was so much going on, much more than just the drug addiction. There was Lev’s feelings about his mother’s death, his father’s grief after losing the love of his life. Lev’s playing football because he was trying to make his father happy even though what he really wanted was the Air Force, there was also Lev’s relationship with the Bailey look alike and her machinations to keep him. On top of all that was the love of these families for each other. It certainly held my interest all the way through.
This book was told in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Aiden Snow and Savannah Peachwood. These are two of my favorite narrators and I love them both. Aiden has a sexy deep voice and Savannah sounds youthful and feminine. They are both great at showing emotions through their voices and don’t sound at all like they are just reading.
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