Read an Excerpt

A
girl meets a bad boy and wham! Her whole life falls apart. Then she
decides to turn the nice boy she hangs out with into a bad boy and
wham! Her whole being falls in love with him. How will Tracie ever
get away from the bad boys and write that book she has always
wanted to write? Like some young adult book written for the parents
of those girls, BAD BOY is a simple little fable about getting what
you want and then not knowing what to do with it. Olivia Goldsmith
is good at this sort of thing --- she also wrote THE FIRST WIVES'
CLUB and THE BESTSELLER.Tracie and Jonny's love story plays out against a stereotypical
Seattle backdrop that one might find in a VH-1 made-for-TV movie
about the grunge movement. The funny thing is, Jonny becomes a man
about town when Tracie turns him into some kind of scary Marlon
Brando retrospective. And then he wonders why she didn't like him
before. But once you get a look at her version of "The Rules"
(i.e., "Wear either throwbacks from thrift stores or really
expensive Italian clothes. And mix them. Do on-line shopping only
if you want to have on-line sex"), you'll wonder why she ever had a
date with anybody to begin with and her brandishing her friend as a
non-possibility for love will make complete sense. Tracie is not
the nicest girl on the block.

BAD
BOY is another in the stream of Olivia Goldsmith books that she
clearly writes for Hollywood --- her back jacket blurb remarks that
all but one of her books have been sold to the movies. The epilogue
to the book lists all the "bad boys" she wants to thank --- half of
them are prominent movie business people. Next time, I think Ms.
Goldsmith might want to skip the book and go straight to the
script. I'm sure it will be a big hit.