Going back to Kendrick Place was great fun and I LOVED Wyatt and Shay's story. With glimpses of Wyatt in the first book I was so excited to see this was his story. Ms. Holford didn't let me down! Wyatt is a bit gruff, grumpy and distracted but when his new neighbor Shay Matthews busts into his life he doesn't stand a chance. She's sweet, kind, and definitely innocent but she has the determination of a bulldog and she slowly wins the tough detective over. Shay knows Wyatt isn't the kind of guy that would be best for her but she can't resist. Besides, she'd always gone with what was best. Maybe now was the time to go with something just a little bit bad!

I highly recommend this one!

Very run of the mill. I wish the characters were better developed. Shay just seems immature and whiny.

the second novel in the kendrick place series, the bad boy next door, follows brooding detective wyatt daniels, who we met in the first book in the series more than friends. as suspicious as ever, he somehow gets tangled up with shay matthews, the new tenant whose moving into the apartment occupied by the previous apartment manager.

shay is finally getting her life together. she's the baby of her family and has been coddled and cared for her whole life. even though she keeps making stupid mistakes requiring her family to bail her out of. so she wants to stand on her own two feet. except that she can't seem to shake her run of bad luck. nor can she escape the friendly (maybe that's not exactly the right word) detective who keeps coming to her rescue.

wyatt is actually quite grumpy about it. but he also just spent a long period of time undercover and is trying to settle back into a normal life. and he wants to be around shay. he finds her irresistible. and he wants to protect her, because you protect the people you love. and what shay and wyatt ultimately need to work through is his desire to protect her and her desire to stand on her own.

this shouldn't be as complicated as they make it, but when in the midst of an operation he doesn't disclose everything to shay, it ends up landing her in the line of fire. if you ask me she overreacts to his lies of omission, especially given his occupation, but i guess we needed wyatt to grovel for forgiveness. (okay, pet peeve, i prefer when the hero and heroine of romance novels don't have ridiculous arguments in the last 10% of the novel that are resolved by the last 5%. i prefer them to behave like actual adults who understand the basic principles of interpersonal communication, but we all have different tastes and this is my only issue with these novels because the same kind of blow up argument happened in more than friends and i didn't love it then either. otherwise, i love the characters, the setting, the writing, it's all good.)

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Didi's review Mar 05, 2017 · edit
liked it
bookshelves: series, romance, men-in-uniform-law-enforcement, contemporary, arc-netgalley

That feeling when it's a glorious day out after endless rain and you feel so energized, you stroll along the street just because(!) and then a car sped by and splashed mud all over you ...and you went from happy to murderous; that's pretty much what I felt between starting and finishing The Bad Boy Next Door.

Don't get me wrong, it's an engaging story! Since reading More Than Friends I was sure there's more to the broody and mysterious tenant of Kendrick Place than glimpsed on that book, so I was quick to grab the chance to read this entry.

A character introduced in this series is Shay Matthews, a new tenant who just clicked with Wyatt. Frankly, the attraction between Shay and Wyatt was too sudden to my liking. But considering the flow of the story, I was willing to overlook the cliche and just enjoying the adorably awkward and stilted romance between these two. I even ignored loopholes on the timeline because: I just wanna soak on the fun and happy bubble of it all.

Until I got to oh, about the last one fifth of the book when - of course - there's the need to burst the bubble and rain trouble all over happyland. Shay suddenly developed some harebrained ideas and pushed Wyatt into acting and saying things she didn't like and she bolted. From there my happy feeling just plummeted!

Now don't get me wrong. I love grovelling scene in a book ...when it was required. What I saw here was an unfair treatment of Wyatt. Yes, he screwed up; but Shay was not totally faultless either. The whole issue - avoiding and moping around and turning deaf on any plead except for own voice - just grated on my nerves.

Thank gads for Brady and Gabby who still made the story interesting for me. Bottom line, I still like this installment better than the previous one, but not as much as I initially thought I would.


Advanced copy of this book is kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I thought that this was a cute, lighthearted read. The kind-of love triangle in this one played out really well and was fun to see what would happen next.

I enjoyed the story and the characters were very well written. I'll be looking to read more from this author!

Nice contemporary romance. No one is insecure or petty. The hero, Wyatt, is a detective, recently returned from an undercover assignment, and the experience is still haunting him. The heroine, Shay, is from a wonderfully supportive family. The only problem is the support feels stifling and she feels like she has to create some distance, via a move, in order to stand on her own two feet.

If I had a criticism, it would be that while I liked Wyatt and Shay, I feel like she, and even he to some extent, were pretty one-dimensional characters. That makes this an easy read, but not an engrossing one. Think beach, not couch on a snowy afternoon.

I received an ARC of this book, via Net Galley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.

DNF. I would have - I was right there with the story, enjoying it, entertained... and then comes the scene where Shay jumps to conclusions about having another woman in Wyatts apartment. After all the mushy, smushy, soft underbelly he revealed to her, she acts like a 13 year old girl. I put it down, and have not been interested in picking it back up :(

Loved revisiting the Kendrick Place and all the residents from More Than Friends. From the first book between Gabby and Owen, we meet both Brady (the mechanic and charmer) and Wyatt (the sexy, broody detective).

I loved Wyatt and his broodiness, his mystery, and sex appeal. I also LOVED that he was instantly intrigued by Shay when she was moving in and was off kilter around her. Shay is tired of overbearing, bossy and controlling people- aka her brother and parents- and wants to love a life of independence, relying on herself and her own choices and decisions- so she thinks. Moving to Boston on a whim she finds herself caught up in the dramas of Kendrick Place and once again in the arms of a bossy-controlling man. While Shay and Wyatt fight what is obvious between them, things around the apartment complex are forcing them together and these two find it hard to resist each other. Wyatt has his own issues to deal with and their inability to handle those issues head on cause tensions and tears between Wyatt and Shay. Having to buckle down and evaluate themselves before they can handle others is exactly what they do. Will they get a happily ever after? Great read- look forward to Brady and Mia's story!

Unfortunately this just didn't work for me.

Short synopsis. Shay wants a fresh start away from her overbearing brothers, so she moves to Boston. Her plans are to start an event planning business. Wyatt was a detective who just finished a long and disturbing undercover assignment that left him feeling mentally and emotionally drained. Both live in the same apartment building, with Shay having just moved in. The two meet and find they get on each others nerves and don't really like each other. She's miss sunshine and he's mister moody and always brooding.

The story was about Shay gaining her independence, Wyatt adjusting to "normal" life and all about apartment living. Shay was more of a one demential character and didn't seem to have much depth. Wyatt was a little better with a little more layers to his character. The two just never seemed to connect and didn't come across as a believable couple pairing. Felt I was reading more about what transpired with individuals who lived in an apartment complex, with an added romance thrown in.

a cute, sweet read

I enjoyed this book, but did feel that the end wrapped up just a little too quickly and neatly. I would be interested in reading more by this author though. I feel she did a good job with character development. I am interested in the other side characters. I have a feeling her other books will deal with their stories.

Three and a half stars.

Shay Matthews moves to Boston to set up her own event planning company and get out from under her over-protective family. On the day she moves into her new apartment Kendrick Place, she meets two very different men who also live in the apartment block. Brady, the pro-temps apartment manager who seems like a nice, kind, open guy, and Wyatt, Mr Tall, Dark and Broody. Guess which one gets Shay's heart pounding?

This is the second book in the Kendrick Place series, following [book:More Than Friends|32686041]. We get to see Owen and Gabby from that book in this one too. Also the issues relating to the former apartment manager and ransacking the communal storage area have not gone away.

Wyatt Daniels has just ended a long stint of undercover work. Taciturn by nature, the things he has had to let slide in order to maintain his cover have sickened him and he is finding it difficult to re-assimilate into normal life. The last thing he needs is the little ray of sunshine that has moved into the apartment building hanging around, but despite himself he worries about her and her blithe ignorance of personal safety.

Jody Holford writes engaging characters and a fun romance with a soupcon of suspense thrown in as leavening. I did feel that the final quarter of the book dragged a little but that was just a personal view.

“The Bad Boy Next Door” feels like a complete misnomer for a rather light-hearted story between a detective and a coddled young woman attempting to find her feet in a new city. But I pushed on, wondering if this was going to be part-suspense, part rom-com and for me, it was really neither as it wasn’t a story that resonated with me at all. Much like a drama centred on a building and its occupants, Shay and Wyatt get pushed together mostly because of proximity and a series of events that neither could have foreseen.

As far as pairings go, it was hard to see Shay and Wyatt as a convincing (and likely) couple because they did seem like a forced pairing. As they were so far apart in terms of experience and personality, I found myself constantly looking for the spark or the strong tie between them but there seemed to be nothing apart from the inexplicable inability to forget each other after an accidental meeting in the basement. But while attraction does and can work in mysterious ways, most of their relationship also felt bland as they tried to find their footing with each other because of the vast differences in their outlook on life. In fact, Wyatt seemed drawn to Shay because she represented the innocent part of life that his months of undercover work took from him; Shay’s reasons for wanting him seemed more nebulous to me apart from him being the grumpy but nice guy next door. Shay did seem too naive however, and too coddled and sensitive for the secretive nature of Wyatt’s work—her own hysterics and tendency to jump to conclusions caused the usual rift at the end…and yet it was Wyatt who found he needed to apologise for being the unfeeling tool.

It’s hard to recommend a book when nothing worked in the story for me, but unfortunately, this was one of those that I needed to pass on.