Pretty Reckless by L.J. Shen Blog Tour

From USA Today and Washington Post bestselling author L.J. Shen comes an intense, high school enemies-to-lovers romance with a twist.

Penn

They say revenge is a dish best served cold
I’d had four years to stew on what Daria Followhill did to me, and now my heart was completely iced.
I took her first kiss.
She took the only thing I loved.
I was poor.
She was rich.
The good thing about circumstances? They can change. Fast.
Now, I’m her parents’ latest shiny project.
Her housemate. Her tormentor. The captain of the rival football team she hates so much.
Yeah, baby girl, say it—I’m your foster brother.
There’s a price to pay for ruining the only good thing in my life, and she’s about to shell out some serious tears.
Daria Followhill thinks she is THE queen. I’m about to prove to her that she’s nothing but a spoiled princess.

Daria

Everyone loves a good old unapologetic punk.
But being a bitch? Oh, you get slammed for every snarky comment, cynical eye roll, and foot you put in your adversaries’ way.
The thing about stiletto heels is that they make a hell of a dent when you walk all over the people who try to hurt you.
In Penn Scully’s case, I pierced his heart until he bled out, then left it in a trash can on a bright summer day.
Four years ago, he asked me to save all my firsts for him.
Now he lives across the hall, and I want nothing more than to be his last everything.
His parting words when he gave me his heart were that nothing in this world is free.
Now? Now he is making me pay.

Book 1
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“I don’t want you transferring into my school,” I hiss out. Melody would gladly file a transfer request, and Principal Prichard would salivate over the chance to snatch him up for our football team.

“That won’t be a problem. You guys suck so much ass, you have shit-breath.”

“Still smells better than poverty. You’re poor, right? Your sister was just bullshitting about being rich.”

When someone hits me with a stick, I run over them with a tank. I’m so mean to him I want to throw up. I hate this part of being me. The striking harder at all costs part.

“Just to make things clear.” I put the brush down, batting my lashes. “You’re not my step-sibling, foster brother, or a part of the family. You’re a stray dog. Last of the litter, most unlikely to be adopted, and a charity case.”

Penn takes a step toward me, and my heart is fighting its way out of my ribcage. The closer he gets, the more I realize that my heart might succeed. Penn’s eyes remind me of a snake’s. Mesmerizing, but inhuman altogether. They weren’t like that before.

His scent messes with my head. I want to reach out and caress his face. Kiss his wounds better. Beg for forgiveness. Curse him. Push him away. Cry on his shoulder for what we’ve done. For how it ended. For what we became afterwards, because I’m full of crap and he is totally empty.

We ruined ourselves the day of our first kiss.

Penn looks down at me. Time stops. It feels like the world is losing gravity, falling into a bottomless depth in space when he clasps my chin with his thumb and finger, lifting my head up. I can’t breathe. I’m not sure I want to, either. My towel drops to the floor with a thud, even though I secured it over my chest. I realize that he tugged at it intentionally. I’m naked. My body, my soul, my heart. All my walls are down. Somewhere in my head, a red alarm blasts and my inhibitions are getting armed, ready to fight back. I’m trying to decode his expression. He is amused, irritated, and…playful? The mixture of emotions doesn’t make any sense.

“Mess with me, Followhill, and I will ruin you.”

“Not if I ruin you first.”

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Erica – ☆☆☆☆☆
5 Book-Hangover Stars

Disclaimer: While this is in a high school setting, with characters under and over eighteen, the prologue when they were fourteen, it is most definitely New Adult content.

I'll do my best to provide a spoiler-free review.

I need to start off this 5-star review with the major con for me, then I'll get to the review. Con: snail mail. There is no way you can predict when you're getting an acceptance letter, especially when you have no idea when it was mailed, especially from another country. It could be today, it could be next week, it could be never because it got lost in transit. The second half of this issue for me is that if you don't receive the acceptance letter on a specific day, no news is good news. You WILL get a rejection letter, then you can freak t.f. out. The logical thing to do would have been to wait until the next day, have the ballet teacher call and confirm, and be happy. The fact that this sets up the novel, continues to be a source of victimhood and guilt, drove me freaking nuts because of how ludicrous it was. As I struggled to overlook the hugest of plot-holes, holding onto the fact that this was a teen who obviously wasn't working with a full deck, I was able to be sucked into the book itself.

From page one, I was hooked, even with what I posted above. Reading fiendishly, I couldn't put the book down, needing to know what happened next. As a sucker for the love-hate trope, most books never really get there. Pretty Reckless went there and further, creating the perfect hate-hate trope that felt real and raw, loaded with lust-filled tension.

Daria feels rejected by her mother, seen as less than, not good enough, as her mother mourns the loss of her missing ballet prodigy. The animosity between Daria and the prodigy was created by her mother, while it was true envy that had the prodigy turning into a rotten apple. Daria is filled with nothing but guilt and the green envy of her Hulky behavior. The relationship between Daria and her mother resonated with me, and I believe most daughters will find this to be the case. It's the little things said in passing, the dismissive remarks that hit the hardest and last the longest.

Daria is more sinner than saint, but other than Jaime (her father) and Knight (the neighbor), whom where truly kind and compassionate characters, I felt Daria shined the brightest as the most real, perfectly flawed character.

Penn is suffering the loss of his twin sister since she ran away, abandoning him to live in torment with an addict mother and an abusive stepfather. He's filled with rage, pain, raw talent, and pure animal magnetism. I need to warn, there was many triggering events in Penn's timeline, featuring assault, addiction, alcoholism, and abuse.

Stemming from events that happened when they were fourteen, at almost eighteen, Daria and Penn are thrust together, mortal enemies filled with animosity and a never-ending source of guilt, secrets, and blatant lies. As foster siblings, with those secrets binding them closer together and the lies keeping them farther apart.

As I said, spoiler-free... hate on hate on hate, brimming with tension-filled lust and need, an undeniable emotional connection, as the secrets and lies come to a head, leaving Penn and Daria exposed for extortion from those who should have protected them the most.

The hero of the novel for me is Dad (Jaime). With Mom (Mel) finally stepping up to the plate. It was a relief to read a novel with teen characters with a set of parents who were not only present but there to defend and protect the children.

Now that I read the novel, I always peruse the reviews, and I am excited to learn these are the children of past characters, judging by the questions and answers asked for this novel. It explains why the dads were comic relief when speaking to Penn.

Highly recommend Pretty Reckless and I look forward to devouring Shen's backlist.


Veronica – ☆☆☆☆☆
Wow! Just Wow! Pretty Reckless is such a rollercoaster. Daria and Penn had my emotions all over the place. I was completely consumed by this story and read it in less than a day. I was up to after 2am finishing and I rarely read past my bedtime. I tried several times to be good and put the book down and go to sleep but I only lasted a few minutes before I picked it up again and kept reading.

Pretty Reckless is an amazing story. This is one of those books that once you read it, you'll want to tell everyone about. But I'm not going tell you about the story, you need to discover it for yourself. I can tell you how much I loved it. It was magnificent. Buy it. Read it. But beware – once you start, you won't want to stop until you get to the end.

L.J. Shen is an International #1 best-selling author of Contemporary Romance and New Adult novels. She lives in Northern California with her husband, young son and chubby cat.

Before she’d settled down, L.J. (who thinks referring to herself in the third person is really silly, by the way) traveled the world, and collected friends from all across the globe. Friends who’d be happy to report that she is a rubbish companion, always forgets peoples’ birthdays and never sends Christmas cards.

She enjoys the simple things in life, like spending time with her family and friends, reading, HBO, Netflix and internet-stalking Stephen James. She reads between three to five books a week and firmly believes Crocs shoes and mullets should be outlawed.

Connect with L.J.

Facebook  ~  Twitter  ~  Instagram  ~  Website  ~  Goodreads
LJ’s Sassy Sparrows Facebook Group


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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Pretty Reckless (All Saints High #1) by L.J. Shen to read and review for this tour. Veronica reviewed her personal copy of the book.