Narrated by Kendall Ryan
Reed McMahon is the Bad Bachelor of the title. He’s a PR professional, having recently made partner in his firm. He is a player but he doesn’t make promises he doesn’t intend to keep and is up front about not wanting more than a hookup with no strings attached. However, he’s getting terrible reviews on Bad Bachelor, a new app for the single women of New York. Women rate their dates and others know whether they’re a good guy or someone to avoid.
There seems to me to be a flaw in the logic of the app though. If the guy is just that good, for the most part he’s not going to still be on the dating market, is he? And if he’s not that good, how is going to get a good review? The positive reviews are mostly of the “nice guy but no chemistry” variety and while that isn’t necessarily a bad thing it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement either. (I have perhaps overthought this a bit.) To be honest I had a bit of discomfort about the app anyway. The whole idea of rating people made me cringe a bit.
Anyway, back to Reed. I honestly thought he didn’t deserve most of his bad reviews. He didn’t lie to anyone. If a woman wanted more than he was offering that’s on her isn’t it? Perhaps I need to turn in my feminist card.
Darcy Greer is a single librarian who feels like a misfit in her own family. She was about to be married the year before, but the day before the nuptials, she walked in on her fiancé and his best man kissing. I had a bit of discomfort about this trope also actually. That said, he was not completely demonised and Darcy wasn’t the butt of a joke for not knowing. Her fiancé had been working very hard to stay in the closet and not let anyone know. Still…
Anywho, Darcy has been single ever since and has lost her sexual confidence. When a friend suggests the Bad Bachelor app, Darcy decides to take a look but she’s not committing to actually going on a date with anyone.
Then Reed’s firm’s annual pro bono PR gig collides with Darcy’s library’s fundraiser and Darcy and Reed are thrown together on the regular. Despite Reed’s walls (he’s very good at keeping people at a distance) and Darcy’s lack of romantic confidence, they gradually become friends and then more.
Reed is far more than a modern rake. He’s devoted to his prickly and unwell father and has abandonment issues because of his family history. While that’s trite to say, the book explains it well and fleshes him out. He has friends and hobbies outside of sexing it up with a different woman seemingly every night and his motivation for his business success is all about taking care of his dad.
Darcy and Reed bond over the things they have in common even though on the surface they seem to be chalk and cheese. And both of them find they can talk to one another. The story also has both characters growing and beginning to address their own family issues too. I liked Reed and Darcy very much and believed in their HEA.
I did wonder however, why Reed did not turn his considerable PR skills on himself when he was taking a hammering because of the Bad Bachelor app? It seemed obvious to me but it was never even an option in the book.
Kendall Ryan sounded really familiar to me but according to my records, I haven’t listened to her narrate before. She had a good hero voice and a pleasant timbre to her tone but every now and then there was some MC confusion and Reed’s voice was used instead of Darcy’s or vice versa. There were also a couple of errors which weren’t picked up in the editing process – the most obvious of which was the substitution of “misogynistic tendencies” for “masochistic tendencies” which changed the sentence entirely from what was in the book (I checked) and what was intended. I figured it out as I was listening as ‘misogynistic’ did not fit with Reed’s character at all.
Darcy’s friend and roommate, Remy, is Australian and Ms. Ryan cannot do an Australian accent to save herself. It’s really difficult for Americans to do a believable Australian accent so I’m not holding it against her too much but there are some simple things which could be corrected very easily. First off, “Aussie” is pronounced “Ozzy” with a z sound and not an s sound. And “avo” (short for avocado) is with a short a, not a long one. I expect there will be a book from Remy’s point of view and if the narrator is the same it’s one I will choose to read rather than listen to. Remy didn’t have tons of dialogue in Bad Bachelor but in her own book her bad accent will be like fingernails down a blackboard for me. However, for those who aren’t that familiar with an Australian accent, they won’t care and this performance is fine. I’d bump the grade up to a B- if not for the accent thing.
Bad Bachelor was a sexy contemporary with a dirty talking hero and a bold tattooed librarian with a penchant for combat boots (what’s not to love?), with unexpected depth and charm. And a bad Australian accent.
Kaetrin
Buy Bad Bachelor by Stefanie London on Amazon
