A Real Good Bad Thing by Lauren Blakely

Narrated by Stella Hunter and Ryan West

Standalone. Reimagined and rewritten from the Jewel duet from 2016.

Lauren Blakely has been one of my favorite authors for years, especially for audiobooks, as she usually has a knack for picking the perfect narrators for her characters. For A Real Good Bad Thing, Lauren took the basics of a duet she wrote in 2016 and re-worked it, completely changing it to become A Real Good Bad Thing, an exciting and fun treasure hunt romance.

Ruby owns Island Eco Adventure Tours in the Florida Keys. Jake is a “retrieval” expert: He basically steals back things that have been stolen and brings them back to their rightful owners. They happen to both be in Flamingo Key at the same time—looking for the same diamonds, but they don’t know that they are on opposite sides when they have a hot hookup on the beach.

Ruby thinks her ex-stepfather is hiding the diamonds while owing her mom a ton of money, and it’s Jake’s job to get those diamonds back to his client. I really enjoyed the action and mystery in this, they had great chemistry, and it was a fun listen.

I’m not sure what held me back from loving this book, but it may have been my mood at the time. A Real Good Bad Thing has everything I love in a book, but as I review this two weeks after listening, I can barely remember it and relied heavily on my notes to write this review.

Likes:

Exciting and different for Lauren
Very likable characters.
Great dialogue.
Lots of chemistry.
An interesting mystery.

Dislikes:

Some of the sex scenes felt a little corny.
It was pretty forgettable for me.

The Narration:

The male narrator, Ryan West, didn’t fit the part to me at all. I like him in paranormal books better. I liked Jake’s voice better when she did it. Stella Hunter was fabulous. This was the first time I found a miscast (to me) in a LB book.

The Down & Dirty:

I’m having trouble rating A Real Good Bad Thing by Lauren Blakely because it’s been 2 weeks since I read it and I just don’t remember it enough. Part of me thinks that maybe I just wasn’t fully present for the listen and that’s why I don’t recall it fully, but the other part of me feels like if it blew me away I would remember it a lot more. That being said, it has everything I love in a book, I love Lauren’s writing, and it was pretty unique.