Early Review: Mia and the Bad Boy by Lisa Burstein

This good girl’s about to meet her match…

Ryder Brooks is living the dream—he’s famous, loved by millions of girls, and miserable. All he really wants is to write his own music, not Seconds to Juliet’s sugary sweet pop. In order to do that, though, the “bad boy” of the band will have to play by the rules. And that includes behaving with his new—and super cute—über-good-girl tutor.

Mia Reyes is in fangirl heaven. Tutoring her favorite member of her favorite band? It’s a dream come true…until it turns into a complete nightmare. Ryder is nothing like she thought. He’s crude, arrogant, and pretty much a total jerk. And the worst part? She’s roped into pretending to be his girlfriend so that no one finds out he’s being tutored. Fake kisses, plenty of PDA, and even sharing his hotel room…

But sometimes even the baddest of bad boys needs a little redemption.

Mia and the Bad Boy was a fun quick read. I didn’t know that this book was part of a series (the second book) and although I would have loved to have known more about the other characters mentioned, it didn’t stop me from enjoying this book because it reads like a good stand-alone.

Mia is the good girl. Ryder is the bad boy. She is paid to become his tutor, but because Ryder doesn’t want anyone else to know about why she’s hanging around with Seconds to Juliet, he claims she is his girlfriend. Now Mia has to go along for the sake of gaining money for her college tuition, and even though it didn’t sound like a horrible idea at first (because seriously, who doesn’t love rockstars?), it soon gets terribly complicated in the matters of the heart.

The plot of this book was sweet and a bit predictable, though I didn’t mind it that much. It’s inevitable for the nice girl to make the bad boy sweeten up or show his true self around her. However, if I had to choose the best part of this book I’d definitely would say it was the boy. Ryder was rude, arrogant and hot, but beneath the bad boy persona, lied a colorful person worth meeting. I had a very small conversation with the author on twitter where she raved about my her Ryder, and she was right to say how wonderful he was because yeah, I fell in love with this character too.

Mia, on the other hand, was an okay character. I liked her, but I was expecting more from her. She is painted like a really smart girl (and I know she was in school material), but I disliked how easily swayed she got by Ryder. I wanted her to put up a bigger fight or to make Ryder fight more for her, but nope, she fell too easily before getting to know him that well. Not even I fell for him that quickly.

Even so, Mia and the Bad Boy was a cute book to take my mind off of things and I enjoyed that it wasn’t heavy on the angst. It’s just the kind of read that I’d recommend for whenever you’re in the mood to hang out with a sweet bad boy rockstar.