Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟 Audiobook: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Spice: 🌶️🌶️

By Elle Kennedy

This book had been on my TBR forever and when the audiobook showed up on Scribd, I figured it was time to check it out. It is the first in the Avalon Bay series, and I was excited to read it because The Deal, also by Kennedy, is fantastic.

Avalon has three types of people: townies, summer tourists, and the wealthy, entitled students of Garnet College. This small-town college romance follows MacKenzie Cabot, who begrudgingly enrolls as a freshman to appease her influential parents and rich long-term boyfriend Preston (an upperclassman at Garnett). Mac would prefer to focus on her booming internet business, but no one in her life takes it seriously. They all want her to attend college and get her “MRS” degree. Little does she know, the doting Preston is a serial cheating asshole.

Cooper is a lifelong Avalon resident and half of the notorious Hartley twins, grinding to get by when Preston gets him fired from his bartending job. Stalking Preston’s Instagram, Cooper and his tight-knit group of friends hatch a plan to get revenge by destroying Preston’s relationship with his picture-perfect girlfriend. However, as Cooper sets the plan into motion, Mac isn’t what he expects, and he finds himself falling in love and thinking about the future for the first time in his life. 

Okay, this book didn’t blow me away. It was cute and fun, but the characters didn’t feel as rounded out as in Kennedy’s other work. You also kinda saw the third-act breakup from the beginning, and the secondary characters didn’t feel as well-developed as I would have liked. However, this was an easy read after having read an intense psychological thriller, and I am confident that, over time, I’ll read the rest of the Avalon Bay series. The audiobook narration is well done and definitely enhances the story.