Got it Bad by Christi Barth Series: Bad Boys Gone Good #3
Published by Avon Impulse on 18th September 2018
Pages: 384
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Kellan Maguire's on the run from the mob, living a secret life. The only bright spot is his U.S. Marshal handler. Yeah, he wants to handle her....a lot. And in spite of all the rules it would break, Federal Marshal Delaney Evans secretly fears she’d risk everything for one night with Kellan. Even though Delaney’s career, her entire world, could implode if she admits how important he is to her. And all that is before the biggest complication of all hits...
3 brothers, all in Witness Protection and their ways of coping with new lives foisted on them when they run into trouble with the mob: that’s what Christi Barth’s Bad Boys Gone Good series is built on. Not having read the entire series, ‘Got it Bad’ does take time getting used to, though it’s clear that Kellan Maguire has the hots for the US Marshal in charge of his and his brothers’ case, an attraction which starts just as he is forced into Witsec.
But the story went off the rails for me about a third through. I lost sight of the grander scheme of things in what felt like page-fillers about Kellan’s other activities in a clubhouse, the sudden number of secondary character insertions and pages of dialogue that seemed to go nowhere. Consequently, the slow-going story also felt as though it was pulled in several directions, apart from the secret affair Kellan and Delaney decided to have because they really couldn’t stand the constant pining/burning anymore (there’s a lot of repetitive talk about how their first kiss is making her panties wet), when I really wanted to read how the Maguire brothers finally got free of the mob’s hold on them.
As the youngest brother forced out of law school, Kellan’s first encounter with Delany Evans made me rethink whether the former could even be considered some kind of romantic hero—smarmy, cocky and oozing collegiate testosterone at the very start with a strong NA bent in his character which felt out of place here. Understandably, Kellan’s dissatisfaction and boredom with life prompted some kind of soul-searching but his level of maturity or lack thereof was somehow reinforced when he realised he could make a difference every day apart from law school—which sounded like a slogan for the education industry—or in the way he thought about women guaranteed to put out after a nice date or his constant thoughts of getting Delaney into bed. But these were also peppered with moments where he did feel ‘older’ in a way, more like an equal to Delaney when he had to be.
In short, the contradictory bits of Kellan threw me off and as one who doesn’t normally bother about the age gap between romantic protagonists, the one between Delaney and Kellan still felt marked anyhow, given the different stages they were at their lives, but especially in the way they both approached their careers (with the latter’s one not even started when he’d not even finished school). For the first half, this was what I’d gotten, which made it hard to buy into the pairing given this gap between them.
That said, ‘Got It Bad’ isn’t badly written at all; this is clearly a case of just me not being able to connect with the story and characters and a rating that reflects this admission.