Review: Good Girl by Piper Lawson
🌶️
Content Warning
This book contains abandonment, death of a parent, addiction, domestic abuse and sexual assault.
A broody rockstar, forbidden attraction, and a promise of whispers that had me clicking “buy”… but did this one actually deliver? 🎸🔥
My Review
📚 My Monthly Wild Card Read
I’ve started trying to do something once a month that pushes me outside my usual reading bubble: I pick a book by an author I’ve never heard of and go in completely blind. No hype. No endless TikTok recommendations. No “everyone is reading this!” influence. Just me, a book, and a little let’s see what happens.
That’s actually how Good Girl landed on my Kindle. I had recently downloaded it during Free Stuff Your Kindle Day, and since I knew absolutely nothing about the author or the book, I figured… why not? This was going to be my monthly wild-card read.
And honestly? I’m glad I gave it a shot. Was it a new favorite? Nope. Did it completely suck me in? Also nope. But it did introduce me to Piper Lawson’s writing, and now I’m curious enough to check out some of her other books—which is kind of the whole point of my little monthly experiment. 🖤
🎸 First Impressions
I’ll be honest: the beginning felt a little cheesy and like it was trying just a little too hard to sell me on the whole rockstar romance fantasy.
The line in the synopsis that originally grabbed me was:
“Because a million women might scream his name…but he whispers mine.”
UM… excuse me? 👀
That sentence had me expecting some serious whispered-in-my-ear, forbidden-rockstar goodness.
Unfortunately, I didn’t hear nearly as many whispers as I was promised.
💋 Where Is The Spice?
If you’re picking this one up expecting a steamy rockstar romance, manage those expectations.
There is basically no spice here. We get a forehead kiss and one proper kiss, and that’s about it.
And considering this is a romance built around a rockstar, forbidden attraction, an age gap, and all the reasons these two shouldn’t be together, I was definitely expecting more payoff.
🎤 Meet Jax
Jax was probably my favorite part of the book.
He’s complicated. Sarcastic. A little bit of an asshole. But underneath all of that, there’s a genuinely caring guy.
There were little moments that showed me there was more to him than the rockstar persona. One of my favorite examples was when he grabbed his friend’s Lego Death Star because he didn’t want it accidentally left behind on the tour bus.
Sir.
That tiny moment told me more about Jax than some of the bigger romantic scenes did.
He definitely has his walls up, and he uses pretty much every possible excuse to keep Haley at a distance—their age difference, the fraternization rule, her dislike of touch… you name it.
And speaking of that age difference…
👀 The “Forbidden” Age Gap
The book makes a pretty big deal about Jax being eight years older than Haley.
And I’m sorry, but I kept thinking…
Eight years? THAT’S the problem?! 😂
Maybe it’s because I’m reading this as a grown woman, but an eight-year age gap didn’t exactly have me clutching my pearls.
Still, I understood what the author was trying to do. It was another obstacle for Jax to hide behind, along with all the other reasons he convinced himself they shouldn’t be together.
💭 Haley & The Chemistry
This is where things got a little hit-or-miss for me.
There were moments when I could absolutely feel the chemistry between Haley and Jax. Their conversations were often interesting, and I enjoyed getting to know them.
“I can’t be what you want.” I expect her to protest or pull away. Instead she smiles, the tiniest gesture in the blackness of the car, but I feel it in every part of me. “You already are.” And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of a man who’s well and truly fucked.
But then there were other moments where I was sitting there thinking…
Okay… where did the chemistry go?
Haley also frustrated me at times because her personality seemed to flip depending on how Jax was treating her.
She could be confident and capable one minute, and then Jax would get cold or distant and suddenly she was questioning everything she had done and assuming she must have screwed something up.
🎸 The Rockstar World
One thing I did really enjoy was Piper Lawson’s writing when it came to the music side of the story.
The musical details and technical aspects felt well researched and gave the book a more authentic rockstar-world feel.
Even though the romance itself didn’t completely grab me, I could tell Lawson knows how to write this environment, and that definitely made me curious about some of her other books.
📖 And Then There’s The Trilogy…
Okay, this is probably my biggest complaint.
This ebook is only 248 pages…and it’s Book ONE of a trilogy featuring the same couple.
WHY?!
I kept feeling like this could have easily been one complete book instead of being stretched across three.
The slow burn was already moving at a pretty slow pace, and by the time we finally got that one proper kiss around 90%, I was like…
WE ARE STILL DOING THIS?!
And then we get the cliffhanger.
I understand wanting readers to immediately grab Book 2, but for me, it felt less like a delicious “OMG, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?” cliffhanger and more like…
Wait. You just stopped the book. 😂
I’m curious about Jax and I might eventually continue, especially because the books are short. But I’m not currently sitting here desperate to know what happens next.
💭 Final Thoughts
Overall, Good Girl was an okay read for me.
It wasn’t a disaster by any means, and I actually think Piper Lawson has a writing style that I could enjoy in another book. Jax was an interesting, complicated character, the rockstar elements were well done, and there were moments where the chemistry between him and Haley really worked.
But the beginning felt a little too cheesy, the romance took forever to actually go anywhere, the lack of spice surprised me, and stretching this story into three books left me feeling like I had only read the first third of a much bigger story.
Would I recommend it? Maybe—with expectations.
Would I immediately jump into Book 2?
Probably not.
But hey, this is exactly why I started my monthly “pick a book I’ve never heard of by an author I don’t know” challenge. Sometimes you discover your next five-star obsession.
And sometimes you discover an author you might want to try again.
This one landed somewhere in the middle for me. 🖤
🌟🌟🌟 3/5 Stars from this “Good Girl”
