ARC Review: Wanted: Bad Boyfriend by T.A. Moore

Blurb:

His mother. His best friend. The barmaid at the local pub. Everyone is determined to find Nathan Moffatt a boyfriend. It’s the last thing Nathan wants. After spending every day making sure his clients experience nothing but romantic magic, the Granshire Hotel’s wedding organiser just wants to go home, binge watch crime dramas, and eat pizza in his underwear.

Unfortunately, no one believes him, and he’s stuck with lectures about dying alone. Then inspiration strikes. He needs the people in his life to want him to stay single as much as he does. He needs a bad boyfriend.

There’s only one man for the job.

Flynn Delaney is used to people on Ceremony thinking the worst of him. But he isn’t sure he wants the dubious honor of worst boyfriend on the entire island. On the other hand, if he plays along, he gets to hang out with the gorgeous Nathan and piss off the Granshire’s owners. It’s a win-win.

There’s only one problem. Flynn’s actually quite a good boyfriend, and now Nathan’s wondering if getting off the sofa occasionally is really the worst thing in the world.

Todd's rating:

This was soooo not the book for me.

While the book was well-written and well-edited, I simply found myself completely bored.

Maybe it was the slightly-older MC's (37 and 42), which aren't my preference at all. There's just something about more "settled" characters that almost always tend to leave me wanting for *some* type of excitement.

Instead, we got tons of on-page time devoted to either Nate's wedding planning trials and tribulations or Flynn's rescue service adventures.

What we did not get, however, were what I felt were a few very important elements to make the story feel complete.

First, the premise of Nate dating Flynn was specifically so that he could flaunt terrible boyfriend behavior in front of the Island's residents (who were collectively a gossipy bag of dicks), so that they would see he was better off being single and stop playing amateur match makers.

Other than one instance, there was a grand total of ZERO "bad boyfriend" behavior on Flynn's part.

Second, Flynn had this big ole' "mysterious past" that the gossipy bag of dicks islanders found damn near impossible to stop talking about. The reason behind why the islanders despise him.

Yet the story ended without ANY actual information being divulged about that past. Flynn did tell Nate that he had "been in the army".

AND ???


Nope, that's it. Backstory of his gossip-inspiring past complete, nothing to see here, moving on, NEXT!

(Yes, as you might imagine, I was justifiably annoyed.)

I did enjoy Nate's mother, but her page time was pretty limited, and her history with the story's resident old, rich bad guy, Teddy, went completely unexplored, too.

I loathe open-ended plot points, mainly because they just feel lazy. Bait and ditch.

There was a little bit of banter and a little bit of (memorable) sex, but mostly? I was bored and wanted to move on to my next read. : (

I'd rate this book at around 2.5 stars, but I'm sure that it will work much better for some other readers out there.

My ARC copy of the book was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair, unbiased review.

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