Title: Bad Bachelor (Bad Bachelor #1)

Author: Stephanie London

Date of publication: 6 March 2018

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Author's links: 

Website / Twitter / Facebook / Goodreads

My rating: 4 stars

Blurb

Everybody’s talking about the hot new app reviewing New York’s most eligible bachelors. But why focus on prince charming when you can read the latest dirt on the lowest-ranked “Bad Bachelors”—NYC’s most notorious bad boys.

If one more person mentions Bad Bachelors to Reed McMahon, someone’s gonna get hurt. A PR whiz, Reed is known as an ‘image fixer’ but his womanizing ways have caught up with him. What he needs is a PR miracle of his own.

When Reed strolls into Darcy Greer’s workplace offering to help save the struggling library, she isn’t buying it. The prickly Brooklynite knows Reed is exactly the kind of guy she should avoid. But the library does need his help. As she reluctantly works with Reed, she realizes there’s more to a man than his reputation. Maybe, just maybe, Bad Bachelor #1 is THE one for her.

This is my first book by Stephanie London and I decided to read it following a recommendation from a friend. I found the premise really interesting - how would an application for rating bachelors/single men work and affect the dating in the internet age. 

I end up enjoying this story a lot both in terms of plot and in terms of hero and heroine who I found to be interesting, complex and easy to relate to.

Darcy was a wonderful mix of a good girl with a bit of wild side - breaking the conventional with colourful tattoos and a personal style which favours comfort over fashion. At the same time she was shy, hesitant when it came to feelings and relationships, still recovering from her one and only disastrous long term relationship. 

Reed was the perfect bad bachelor on the surface - confident, successful, good at his job (image making), cold and distanced in his personal life. He guards his private life really tight but his softer side showed when he was with Darcy despite his continuous efforts to hide it. 

I loved their banter, sort of enemies-to-lovers element in their romance. Most of all I enjoyed about Darcy and Reed because they felt like real people with their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. We seen them both struggling with some complicated family dynamics which were handle rather well in my opinion. There was this moment for both of them when getting to know the other person and family gave them insight into their own family issues and how to deal with them. 

As a minor quibble I'd say I wish the website thing was handled better. It was in fact a site where women rated the men they have gone out/had relations with. It was done anonymously and with the consent of the men rated which violated all ethical norms for me. I see this as dangerous approach to people as inanimate objects and also as an easy tool to smear someone's reputation. Even though it was called out and it got transformed into a kind of a dating site, I felt it was too serious an issue which needed a firmer condemnation. 

Overall, I liked the easy flow of the story and writing was engaging and fun. I'm very much looking forward the next book in the series.