NEW ADULT MONDAYS: Bad For You (Sea Breeze #7)

The New Adult genre - their bad boys and big problems and epic loves make them engrossing tales that are so easy to lose yourself in. What's not to love about that? And, now, thanks to the cool chicks at Bewitched Bookworms, we can show these books the love they deserve in a weekly feature - New Adult Mondays.

Bad For You (Sea Breeze #7), by Abbi Glines
Publish Date: April 1, 2014
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Format: e-ARC, provided by the publisher
Genre: new adult contemporary romance
To Buy: Amazon * Barnes & Noble

Rating: 4.5 STARS

(From Goodreads) Addiction was something Krit Corbin accepted as part of his nature a long time ago. He decided to embrace it and flip his finger at the rules. Women had always been the number one thing on his list of addictions. He couldn’t get enough. Being the lead singer in a rock band had only made access to his favorite addiction that much easier.

Being alone was the only thing Blythe Denton understood. The small town minister’s family that raised her hadn’t accepted her as their own. The minister’s wife had always made sure Blythe understood just how unworthy she was of love. When Blythe is sent away to college and given a chance to finally be free of living as an unwanted burden, she looks forward to having peace in her life. Being alone isn’t something that bothers her. She escapes reality in the stories she writes.

However, the ridiculously sexy tattooed guy who keeps throwing parties in the apartment above hers is driving her crazy. For starters, he doesn’t treat her like she would expect a guy with a different woman always hanging on his arm to treat someone as uninteresting as her.

She looks nothing like the gorgeous women she sees parading in and out of his apartment, but for some strange reason he keeps showing up at her door. During a party at his apartment, Krit’s new neighbor comes to the door with her long brown hair pulled up in a messy knot and a pair of glasses perched on her cute little nose. She wants him to turn down the music, but he convinces her to stay.

Krit Corbin may have just found his biggest addiction yet. And Blythe Denton realizes too late that she’s finally been claimed.

Normally, the bad-boy-falls-in-love-with-the-innocent-sheltered-girl trope doesn’t do it for me. Both characters always seem so overdone and a caricature of real people. For some reason, I didn’t feel that way about Bad For You. I loved this book

Perhaps the reason why Bad For You was so much better than other books that use this particular plot device is because we already know Krit. We’ve known him for several books now and really got to see him in action in the Sea Breeze book immediately before this one, Misbehaving. Yes, he’s a bad boy in every way down to the tats, piercings, rock band lead singer job and man-whoring ways. But, we also know that there is a lot more to Krit Corbin. He’s a good man with a good heart. He cares about his friends and his sister. And he desperately wants someone to love him for him.

In that aspect, Blythe is perfect for Krit. She’s as pure and transparent as they come. Having been raised in a terribly strict home and abused verbally and physically, she’s been conditioned to think everyone around her is better than her. She sees the good in everyone else and only the supposed “evil” inside her. She’s free and on her own for the first time in her life, and although she’s painfully shy and not good in large groups of people, she is determined to overcome this and finally live her life to the fullest.

Krit and Blythe are two broken people that are so good together. Although their shades of childhood abuse are similar, how they handled it and who they became because of it are very different. It seems that once they meet and start hanging out (initiated, of course, by Krit – he does have a habit of steamrolling over everyone in his path), they start to balance each other out. Blythe soothes the wildness and rough edges in Krit. And Krit brings Blythe out of her shell enough to make friends and get involved in living her life.

Best of all, they seem to encourage the value placed on themselves. Both Krit and Blythe think they are worthless people, destined to live only the most mediocre of lives. And then, once they meet, neither can understand why the other thinks those things of themselves. They both set out to show each other and the people around them how wonderful they are. And this has a profound effect on them, both individually and as a couple.

There aren’t quite as many sexy times in Bad For You, but it’s okay. There’s a crazy amount of sexual tension there between Blythe and Krit to keep you satisfied until the main event. And, can I just tell you how much I LOVED being inside Krit’s head? The boy is all over the place, but holy moly – it’s impossible to not love him with all your heart after reading his thoughts about both Blythe and about himself. It made Bad For You my most favoritest Sea Breeze book yet.