Title: Bad Boyfriend
Series: Bad in Baltimore: Book Two
Author: K.A. Mitchell
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Length: 272 Pages
Category: Contemporary, Age Gap
At a Glance: Fake boyfriends, a little age play, and a whole lot of chemistry between Quinn and Eli come together to make this an unputdownable read.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Causing trouble has never been more fun.
Eli Wright doesn’t follow anyone’s rules. When he was seventeen, his parents threw him out of the house for being gay. He’s been making his own way for the past five years and he’s not about to change himself for anyone’s expectations. For now, romance can wait. There are plenty of hot guys to keep him entertained until he finds someone special.
Quinn Maloney kept the peace and his closeted boyfriend’s secrets for ten years. One morning he got a hell of a wake-up along with his coffee. Not only did the boyfriend cheat on him, but he’s marrying the girl he knocked up. Inviting Quinn to the baby’s baptism is the last straw. Quinn’s had enough of gritting his teeth to play nice. His former boyfriend is in for a rude awakening, because Quinn’s not going to sit quietly on the sidelines. In fact, he has the perfect scheme, and he just needs to convince the much younger, eyeliner-wearing guy who winks at him in a bar to help him out.
Eli’s deception is a little too good, and soon he has everyone believing they’re madly in love. In fact, he’s almost got Quinn believing it himself….
Review: I first read K.A. Mitchell’s Bad Boyfriend in its original publication back in 2011. When you read as much as we do, let’s face it, sometimes you remember a book more for the way it made you feel when you were done with it than you recall all of its nuances and details—that’s just the way it is—and then time passes, tastes evolve, experience changes us in both small and myriad ways. What I remembered most about the story was that the characters clicked with me in a big way, so I grabbed it in its latest iteration to see if what had drawn me to it seven years ago withstood the test of time. It so did. This novel is a great example of how to do plotty sex and chemistry between main characters. I love Quinn and Eli so much. And Peter Laurent is still a shitweasel all these years later, so there’s that too.
For ten years Quinn Maloney was invested in and committed to his relationship with Peter, ten years of fidelity, shared memories, a life built with each other, but in one night of intense sex and a morning after that goes down in the annals of history as the dickiest move of all dick moves, Peter packs a box—thinking Quinn is at work, prepared to slither out without so much as a word—and leaves, throws away the life they’d built, and takes. the dog. with him… Why? Because Peter wants to marry his baby mama. Yeah, it’s like that. In spite of the fact that he’s been living with, and having sex with, a man for ten years, Peter has a real hard time admitting he’s attracted to men. He’s not gay, bi, or whatever. Really. He’s not. Did I mention Peter is a denying, cheating shitweasel? He’s also so much fun to hate.
Quinn’s ties to the Laurent family complicate everything immensely. The family thinks (or maybe they were denying the obvious) that Quinn and Peter were just housemates for ten years, and so the ties that bind, the ties that Quinn doesn’t want to lose because he loves them like the family of his own he doesn’t have, serve to ensure there will be some awkward moments in the story—not the least of which is Quinn being asked to play godfather to Peter’s infant son. I know, right?! Those ties that bind can feel a little like a noose sometimes. So, what do you do when your one credible excuse to decline would mean outing your closeted ex to not only his family but his wife too? You accept the mantle of responsibility like the good and magnanimous man you are. And you take a date to the baptism, obviously, because trying to make your ex jealous is everything, and besides, you’ve never denied being gay.
And oh, a little bit of revenge can be so satisfying.
Fake boyfriends is a tried and true trope, one I’ve always loved. Yes, it’s predictable. Yes, like any romantic trope it can be mishandled, but K.A. Mitchell delivers it perfectly here, by and large due to Eli. He’s young, sure, but is strong and confident and competent, and he stands up for himself in every single way. His backstory hits all the right notes, and he’s the perfect shock of color introduced in Quinn’s dull existence at just the right time. Truth is stranger than fiction had to come from somewhere, and the plot of this novel is just plausible and twisted enough to lead me to believe this could’ve happened to someone Mitchell knows, because humans and family are complicated messes most of the time, which is why I always think twice before I say, ‘That would never happen IRL.’
The undeniable truth here is that Quinn and Eli are combustible together. The sex, the chemistry, the age play, it’s all there in spades, but the only way it works is if their characterizations are strong individually, which they are. They’re both so charming and funny and sassy and passionate, and their conversations run the fine line between revelation and evasion at the opportune moments. It all came together in such a perfect storm of storytelling that the book was unputdownable even though I already knew how it all played out. Mistakes were made. Of course they were. That’s to be expected when a relationship begins on one big lie and mind-blowing sex is the only thing going for you, but Mitchell builds on it and leads readers to a believable happy beginning for Quinn and Eli. That’s the definition of well-written erotica as far as I’m concerned—if you can take out the sex and be left with a good story that develops into a credible relationship, it’s been done right.
And yeah, we get to savor Peter’s day of reckoning too, which is altogether delicious.
If you read and liked this book in its first iteration, it’s so worth a reread. If you’re looking for a new-to-you read with a little age play, some light BDSM, and two guys who belong together, this one is a good gamble. It can be read as a standalone in spite of it being book two in the series, so don’t be afraid to jump in here.
You can buy Bad Boyfriend here:
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