Title: Better When He's Bad
Series: Welcome to the Point #1
Author: Jay Crownover
Release Date: June 17, 2014
Welcome to the Point
There’s a difference between a bad boy and a boy who’s bad . . . meet Shane Baxter.
Sexy, dark, and dangerous, Bax isn’t just from the wrong side of the tracks, he is the wrong side of the tracks. A criminal, a thug, and a brawler, he’s the master of bad choices, until one such choice landed him in prison for five years. Now Bax is out and looking for answers, and he doesn’t care what he has to do or who he has to hurt to get them. But there’s a new player in the game, and she’s much too innocent, much too soft…and standing directly in his way.
Dovie Pryce knows all about living a hard life and the tough choices that come with it. She’s always tried to be good, tried to help others, and tried not to let the darkness pull her down. But the streets are fighting back, things have gone from bad to worse, and the only person who can help her is the scariest, sexiest, most complicated ex-con The Point has ever produced.
Bax terrifies her, but it doesn’t take Dovie long to realize that some boys are just better when they’re bad.
There’s a difference between a bad boy and a boy who’s bad . . . meet Shane Baxter.
Sexy, dark, and dangerous, Bax isn’t just from the wrong side of the tracks, he is the wrong side of the tracks. A criminal, a thug, and a brawler, he’s the master of bad choices, until one such choice landed him in prison for five years. Now Bax is out and looking for answers, and he doesn’t care what he has to do or who he has to hurt to get them. But there’s a new player in the game, and she’s much too innocent, much too soft…and standing directly in his way.
Dovie Pryce knows all about living a hard life and the tough choices that come with it. She’s always tried to be good, tried to help others, and tried not to let the darkness pull her down. But the streets are fighting back, things have gone from bad to worse, and the only person who can help her is the scariest, sexiest, most complicated ex-con The Point has ever produced.
Bax terrifies her, but it doesn’t take Dovie long to realize that some boys are just better when they’re bad.
Sooooo....turns out I have a thing for bad boys. Not just the soft-hearted bad boys - you know the ones I mean - but the ones that are just. Plain. Bad. Before Bax, I really didn't love the asshole-to-everyone-but-you guy that appears in a lot of books but this guy... This guy was different. And I'm totally into that.
Shane Baxter has spent the last five years locked away and thinking about how and why that happened. Not much has changed in The Point since he's been away except for her... Dovie Pryce. She weasels her way into Bax's life and, despite her troubled childhood, he knows that she is too soft, too innocent for the life he leads. Dovie is equal parts terrified and turned on by the ex-con. She believes there's more to Bax than just his bad boy persona, but the more time she spends with him, trying to get answers about the most important person in both their lives, the more she realizes that perhaps Bax is better when he's bad.
Man, this was a goooood book. It was well constructed, the characters were likable - even lovable, despite their misdeeds - and it was just plain intriguing. The story moved at the perfect pace. I never doubted the motivations of Bax and Dovie, nor their decision to be with one another despite their differences, because it just made sense. All the signs were there, woven perfectly into the story, and never felt false or forced. Bax was a true bad boy. Unapologetic and unwilling to change (consciously) and yet, I still wanted him. He seemed redeemable even at his worst and that, to me, is the most important thing when it comes to character development. If there's no indication that there's depth to someone, how can you root for them? I can't wait for the next book - Race's book - to see if I love all bad boys, or if it's just this one...
Better When He's Bad is the first book in the Welcome to the Point series and can be read as a standalone. No cliffhanger.
~ Review by Beth
I let out the breath I was holding and took another step closer to her. The water was splashing on the sleeve of my shirt as I reached up to grab both of her cheeks in my palms. “Are you scared of me?”
It was the start of the questions I had asked her what felt like a lifetime ago. Her answer didn’t change, but this time when she answered, she was holding back a smile that made my heart hurt.
“Terrified, but I kind of like it now.”
“Do you trust me?” My voice broke. I had never really trusted anyone but Race and now there was her and my brother and just all kinds of new things making my life so much more complicated and undeniably fuller.
“With my life. I trust all the parts of you, Bax. You need to know that.”
“You going to go to bed with me?” That made her outright laugh and she reached up to curl her hands around my wrists.
“As often as I can and anyplace in between when the mood strikes.” The rest of the blood racing around my system went solidly south.
I dropped my forehead so it was resting on hers and the water from the showerhead was cascading down around us. I was making a mess, but I didn’t care because I had her, and she was my home. “Do you love me?”
The words sounded so foreign, but so right, when I was saying them to her. She brushed her full lips across mine and the last three months without her faded away.
“Do you want me to lie to you or tell you the truth?”
I smiled against her mouth and kissed her back twice as hard as she had kissed me. “Lie to me.”
She reached up and put her arms around my neck and took a step back, dragging me all the way into the shower stall with her. The water was lukewarm at best, and it made me shiver. So did the fact that she started to impatiently pull the tail of my shirt up over my head. A task made increasingly difficult considering I was now soaked head to toe and the material was clinging to me.
“Of course not. You’re the last person in the world I could love.”
Jay Crownover is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Marked Men series. She will also be introducing the dark and sexy world of The Point in a new series this summer starting with Better When He’s Bad. Like her characters, she is a big fan of tattoos. She loves music and wishes she could be a rock star, but since she has no aptitude for singing or instrument playing, she'll settle for writing stories with interesting characters that make the reader feel something. She lives in Colorado with her three dogs.
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