Book Review: Crazy Beautiful Love (The Martelli Brothers #1) by J.S. Cooper

Crazy Beautiful Love by J.S. Cooper is part of The Bad Boys of Summer anthology (ft. authors Emily Snow, Erin Noelle, J.S. Cooper, Michelle Lynn & Nevaeh Lee, Selena Laurence, Shanora Williams, and T. Torrest)


(Blurb): This is not the typical bad boy meets good girl story.

Logan Martelli is a bad boy. He's handsome, sexy, and knows what he wants. He steals cars. He doesn't do relationships. And he has the hottest green eyes in River Valley.

Maddie Wright is a good girl with a wild streak. She's confident, strong, and goes after whatever or whoever she wants. And Maddie wants Logan Martelli with a passion.

One fateful night brings Logan and Maddie together and electricity sparks between them. Maddie and Logan make a real connection, but when Logan finds out who she is, he wants nothing to do with her. However, he soon realizes he can get the ultimate revenge for his family if he continues to date Maddie. The problem is he's starting to fall for Maddie, and he knows that a relationship will mess up everything.

Logan has to decide if revenge is worth losing his one shot at real love. What price will he pay if he betrays the one woman who may finally see behind his bad boy image?

Book Information:

Genre: Contemporary romance

Age: New adult

Pages: 277

Series: Standalone

What I liked

Contrary to the blurb's opening statement, Crazy Beautiful Love is one of those typical bad-boy-meets-good-girl books. I have no fault with those (I'll willfully admit I love me some bad boys) and I knew that before starting it.  If you've read too many of those lately then you're probably going to want to skip this one for now.

Logan Martelli is a badass. We know that from the book blurb and we know that from the 6th line in the book where Logan himself states that he isn't much for crowds because people point and stare and say, "I think that's Logan Martelli," in awe-struck tones as if I were Al Capone or someone. 

I was a little worried after reading that because I didn't know if Logan would turn out to be one of those self-depreciating bad boys, serial killer bad boys, or the I-think-I'm-a-badass-but-have-never-left-home bad boys. I prayed it wasn't the latter (don't judge me...).

Turns out Logan is a fairly legit bad boy, although I think he was portrayed worse by the community (and author) than what he actually was. Moot point.

What I didn't like

Maddie gave me a bit of character whiplash. She comes off strong right out of the gates. This was something that took me a bit by surprise (because I haven't read a female character like that in a while) and it excited me to come across a take-charge girl.

Too quickly that attitude left, unfortunately. And then just when you thought Maddie was going soft there would be a 180 and she'd be talkin' the talk again. The problem was she never quite walked the walk. Her actions didn't match her mind and I had a hard time telling if she was acting that way just to play Logan or if she had a real deep-rooted problem. It later became a little more clear, but it still never felt like her actions and thoughts mirrored one another.

Logan was a bit too self-depreciating for my liking. We've all met the brooding boy time and time again. This time I couldn't connect with him. His heart and mind were in the right place, but I didn't feel that his backstory quite lined up with his present state of mind. He was kind of stuck in the past (which he acknowledges), and never gives a good reason as to why he continues with those ways when there are opportunities for outs. There's this story involving an altercation between him and the Mayor back when, but that story was never fully explained. I thought it would be fully explained later but it never was and it left me saying, "What?! No way did that make you into the person you are today!" 

Essentially, the characters of Maddie and Logan had the same writing flaws. It was hard to tell where their mind was really at in situations and it felt like they were constantly hiding a secret that the reader was never privy of.

Overall, Crazy Beautiful Love is an average book with this type of bad boy plot. There were some emotional holes left to be filled, and had they been, I think this would rate a lot higher.