Bad Boy: A Novel

by Leah Raeder

“Wake presents an intense, suspenseful, and unusual tale of romantic suspense that will make readers question their perceptions of gender and relationships.” —Booklist (starred review)

A “fast-paced, mind-bending romantic thriller” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about a transgender vlog star who struggles with a past that continues to haunt him as he sets out to prove that he’s not a “bad boy,” but something else entirely: a good man.

Vlog star Renard Grant has nothing to prove: he’s got a pretty face, chiseled body, and two million adoring video subscribers. Plus scars on his chest and a prescription for testosterone. Because Ren is transgender: assigned female at birth, living now as male. He films his transition and shares it bravely with the world; his fans love his honesty and positivity.

But Ren has been living a double life.

Off-camera, he’s Cane, the muscle-bound enforcer for social justice vigilante group Black Iris. As Cane, he lets his dark side loose. Hurts those who prey on the disempowered. Indulges in the ugly side of masculinity. And his new partner, Tamsin Baylor, is a girl as rough and relentless as he is. Together, they terrorize the trolls into silence. But when a routine Black Iris job goes south, Ren is put in the crosshairs. Someone is out to ruin his life. He’s a bad boy, they say, guilty of what he punishes others for. Just like every other guy: at heart, he’s a monster, too.

Now Ren’s got everything to prove. He has to clear his name, and show the world he’s a good man. But that requires facing demons he’s locked away for years. And it might mean discovering he’s not such a good guy after all.

Elliot Wake has written a “searingly modern game of cat and mouse” (L.S. Hilton, New York Times bestselling author) that “compels readers to question their conceptions about gender and desire” (Publishers Weekly). Darkly humorous and evocatively sexy, Bad Boy is romantic suspense at its finest.

• ISBN10: 1501115022
• ISBN13: 9781501115028
• Publish Date: 6 December 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Atria Books
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

Bad Boy is SUCH an intoxicating read. Although I’m so stupid because I really wish I had read Cam Girl and Black Iris, because there’s a proper information overload in the beginning, trying to remember who everyone was. But it was so good! You have to properly concentrate to keep up because JUST when you think you’ve got the story down, BAM! Along comes another plot twist and you’re back at square one.

Ren was such a complex MC, and I very much enjoyed learning about his transition because I don’t know what it’s like to feel like you’re in the wrong body and his transition videos and continuing anxiety/feelings/all of that really helped throughout Bad Boy, and the contrast between Ingrid, who didn’t support Ren in the slightest, and Tamsin, who saw Ren as Ren was so stark, and so horrible, too, because Ingrid was actually pretty terrible and the whole Ren/Ingrid relationship was one of the most toxic I’ve ever read. I just wanted to tell Ren to leave her to her own bitter self, but then with all the Black Iris stuff and Ren not sure who to trust I could understand why he went back to Ingrid again and again, because he felt so lost, and she had been there the whole way, good or bad.

I was absolutely wrapped up in Bad Boy. The tight, twisty plot; the characters – Tamsin, Blythe, Laney, Ellis, Armin – I was never sure who to really trust, who was on Ren’s side and that’s so scary to know who you can rely on (or not). The writing is spot-on, Elliot Wake has such a lyrical writing style, so descriptive, so beautiful, and the long chapters properly hooked me in and kept me reading chapter after chapter. I just loved this book, and I have GOT to go and read Cam Girl and Black Iris STAT. This book was just out of this world amazing.

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

Bad Boy is a kind of companion novel to the author's previous two books. I would definitely recommend reading Black Iris first, since that one gives a lot of background into what Ren is involved in, which is a vigilante group formed to punish evil men. We're thrust straight into that world, and there are some quick recaps and introductions, but I do think reading the first novel first will make it make more sense. There are also characters from Cam Girl, but no plot threads, so it's not necessary to understand what's happening here, but I'd say read it anyway because it's freaking fantastic! Anyway, this is Ren's story of how he was hurt by their current target, and how he's going to make sure it doesn't happen again or to anyone else.

Bad Boy was a very interesting look at gender, sex, sexuality, privilege, and just human nature in general. The Black Iris group exists to teach misogynistic men a lesson and make the women they've hurt feel more safe. However, there's a conflict created because Ren was hurt by a man, but he's a man, so does that protection not extend to him? Ren is straddling this line where women embrace him because he's "different." He knows what it's like to be in their shoes, but on the flip-side Ren is also a man with the same capability to hurt them as cis men. We get to see this when he's falsely accused of rape. It's such a sticky situation, because although we know that he didn't do it, there's still a woman out there saying that he did. Should people believe her, or him? Basically this story explores all of that messy grey area.

Oddly, my favorite part about Bad Boy was this toxic relationship between Ren and his high school best friend, Ingrid, who is now his roommate despite the tension between them. She hates that he's transitioning. They use to date (she's a lesbian) and she wants that girl she loved back. She can't look at Ren without seeing the men that she hates but also that girl he was. She alternates between being downright cruel to him, to comforting him when he needs it, and then back to trying to force him back into a life that he doesn't want. It's all kinds of screwed up, but I was fascinated!

What I didn't like about Bad Boy was that it was jumpy and unfocused at times. The romance was especially underdeveloped. Apparently months had passed with Ren and Tamsin flirting and I missed it! Where did those months go? They went from at each other's throats, to a kind of uneasy truce, to having marathon sex and declarations of love! Where's all of the inbetween? I don't know. The plot also weaved in and out, so it felt very rushed at the end, and almost like it was written in after the fact. The majority of the narrative is Ren's transition, and I actually loved that. I loved seeing the world from his perspective. He has male privilege, which is something he's learning to handle, but he also can't forget what it's like to not have it. This overshadowed everything else going on. That's not a bad thing, since that's what I became invested in, but it's a shame that the suspense and romance weren't given the same attention.

In the end, I did like Bad Boy. I do think it could have benefited from being a bit longer, which would have made the time jumps not so jarring, and the romance would have had time to stew. But I did love how deep into Ren's life that we got, and the transcripts from his vlogs added something special.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.