Customer Reviews

Bad Boy

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(40)

 

 

I'm a huge Olivia Goldsmith fan. I reread _First_Wives_Club_ from time to time, and I adore _Bestseller_. I even keep copies of her lesser works around, on the theory that there will be another long winter night when I need some high-quality mind-candy to keep me company in front of the fire. This book, however, went to the used bookstore as soon as I finished it. And even finishing it was a struggle.

What's wrong with this book? A better question would be what's right about this book, and the answer to that is "not much". Basically, the writing style is fluent and the first 70 pages are enjoyable. My specific quibbles with the book are:

-- shoddy research: you cannot fly from Tacoma to Seattle, since the Seattle-Tacoma International airport serves Seattle AND Tacoma

-- more shoddy research: people in Seattle talk about locations in it by neighborhood name, not by intersection

-- more shoddy research: the Mother's Day journey Jon undertakes is almost certainly not possible on a bicycle

-- more shoddy research: Jon's experience at a high tech powerhouse is unlike anyone's experience at any high tech powerhouse I have ever worked at, heard about from employees, or can imagine

-- still more shoddy research: what kind of newspaper reporter gets to work regular hours, let alone never be at work? what kind of full-time newspaper writer produces only four or five fluff pieces in a several-month period?

(All this shoddy research makes me wonder why she bothered to set a book in a location and setting she knew nothing about.)

More things that are wrong with this book:

-- stupid plotlines, unresolved issues and weird digressions

-- unlikable, unbelievable, unrealistic characters

-- a foreshortened ending, which was entirely unsatisfying and unbelievable

(All of which makes me wonder why she wrote it so fast, so short, and so poorly.)

I'm sorry I bothered to finish the book. I only did so because I just couldn't bring myself to believe that Olivia Goldsmith could write such a bad book. But she could, and she did. I will be buying her next book in paperback. I hope it's better than this one.

Tracie Higgins is a writer in a dead-end relationship with a musician. Jon is a work-aholic who can't get ANY KIND OF relationship. These two young people are good friends, and every Sunday night thet get together for coffee, and to talk about their problems.

Jon gets an idea, he can have Tracie transform him into a heartbreaker, the kind of guy women fall all over. At first Tracie thinks the idea is silly, but she does agree to help her friend. What ensues is a hysterical journey of expensive haircuts, the latest fashions, and very bad pick-ups ( the airport scene being one of the funniest).

As the two continue with the scheme, they realize they both MAY have found the right person...in each other.

"Bad Boy" is another funny read from Olivia Goldsmith. Ms. Goldsmith has the knack of churning out fresh, funny, and totally un-putdownable novels.

Readers will undoubtly root for true love to prevail, once they have caught their breath from laughing so hard.

Nick Gonnella

I love Olivia Goldsmith's books -- THE BESTSELLER is one of the best-ever books in its genre, and THE FIRST WIVES CLUB and FLAVOR OF THE MONTH were tremendous fun. So I couldn't wait to read this book. What a disappointment. Goldsmith is far better at capturing the lives of glittering, glamorous people than a group of fairly ordinary Seattle twentysomethings. The plot is predictable from beginning to end. And did Goldsmith even visit Seattle, or did she do her research long distance? At one point Jon goes to the Seattle airport because he thinks it would be a good place to pick up women. He zeroes in on a flight arriving from Tacoma. Uh, Olivia, the Seattle airport is practically IN Tacoma. That's why it's called SEATAC.

Arriving only 11 months after the 500-page YOUNG WIVES, BAD BOY is a bad book that I can only imagine Goldsmith simply rushed to finish. Next time, I hope she takes a little more time and produces a yummy novel that's worth waiting for.

Kind of slow reading, with conversational gems few and far between. Not up to Goldsmith's normally witty style--seems kind of tired, and plods along at times like an old horse at the end of a hard work day. Needed major editing. I would not recommend purchasing this book, perhaps borrow from a friend or library, but not worth adding to your own collection. I would not recommend. Read only if extremely bored, or while snoozing at the beach.

Bad Boy, Bad Book. I heard in my library discussion group it was taken from an earlier book by another author, and I read the Boyfriend School, and boy oh boy it is lifted right from it. Geez! Is this legal? Bad Bad Author. Don't spend your money on a bad boring book which the author cannot even come up with her own ideas. If she was caught shoplifting this book, she would be in jail for ten years. Can books be given a negative star rating? -10.

If I had not known that Olivia Goldsmith had written "Bad Boy" I would have thought it was a first time novel from a novice writer. I really have enjoyed her previous novels, but this one left me puzzled. It was missing something important---heart. That spark that makes us really care about her characters. I didn't care about Tracey. I didn't care about Jon. They both seemed rather insipid, and if they were actually friends of mine, I would dump them in a heartbeat. The only remotely interesting character in the entire book was a formulaic waitress that recurred throughout the book, and frankly, I can't even remember her name, so she wasn't all that remarkable. After the first two chapters, things really got slow. I think naptime at the nursing home would be more lively. There was just no life in this book. And quite frankly, I don't know how the author ever thought she knew anything about the great state of Washington, but she doesn't have a clue! Here's hoping that Goldsmith's next book makes up for this clunker.

I was looking forward to a wickedly fun read, and was very very disappointed. This was a rather dull and rather long drawn out affair, which seemed hastily written and full of characters with pointless lives, and who exist in the book for pointless reasons. The cover is nice, but as has been said, you can't judge a book by it's cover. Olivia Goldsmith can write, and can write very well, but took a dive on this one.

My stars, I am glad I am not the only one who was very uncomfortable by the incredible similarities to Sara Bird's wonderful book, "The Boyfriend School." In "Bad Boy," Goldsmith has indeed taken almost indecent liberties with Bird's work. I know that it is very common to borrow ideas, themes, characters and plots and recombine and rewrite them into a new story. But in this case, Goldsmith has so many things that are exactly the same, that it defies the explanation of "mere" coincidence. Perhaps Goldsmith read Bird's work years ago, and subconsciously kept the storyline alive, and it has come forth in a (barely) new incarnation. Don't know the answer to this question, but I do know that the publisher and/or editor should have sniffed this out before the book went to print. Indeed, Goldsmith and her editor and publisher owe an apology to first and foremost to Sarah Bird, and secondly to her fans, who have paid their hard earned money for this novel.

I totally agree with the readers who found this book a disappointment! The characters were one dimensional and each one was a cliche (i.e. the grumpy, yet big-hearted waitress, the overweight yet big-hearted friend, the beautiful gold-digger)and I never got to the point where I cared what happened to any of them. Plot lines were introduced but never developed...what happened to Tracie's mother, where was her father, how come Jonathan's father married so many times...And after the first chapter, I knew exactly what was going to happen, how it was going to happen, and what the ending of the book would be. A complete waste of my time and my money.

I brought this book with me to the beach to read this weekend. Instead of whiling away the afternoon engrossed in its pages, I was enraged that I had been "taken" by such a trite, uncreative attempt at writing, especially by someone who in the past has shown extreme talent.

This book trys so hard to be hip and yet it fails miserably. Its almost as if Ms. Goldsmith is trying to cash in on all the readers of books about young singles such as Bridget Jones, Confessions of a Shopaholic or Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married. However, the differences between this book and those was that the others were GOOD! And they were probably good because the authors knew what they were writing about and were closer in age to their heroines. They had their fingers on what was going on in their worlds around them. Ms. Goldsmith certainly does not have her finger on the heartbeat of the twentysomething Seattlites she is attempting to write about. In fact, she is so much older and so much further removed that her poor attempts to portray these people and their words and actions at times made me physically wince. (It was kind of like a dorky junior high health teacher wanting to talk with a 9th grader about rap music - instead of being cool, the teacher just looks like more of a dork.)

This book was fomulmatic and extremely predictable. Somewhere around page three you can decipher the rest of the story. I just kept hanging on thinking there would be some twist of fate, but once again I was let down. Obviously, this is not her genre. Not only would I not recommend this book to anyone, I would tell others to RUN in the other direction from it. Don't let it ruin your trip to the beach!