Dirty is the second Kylie Scott book I've read, and I have to say that there were a lot of things that really frustrated me about this book. While the romance genre is definitely one of my favorite genres, if not my favorite genre, of books to read, Dirty contains quite a few of the elements that I tend to hate about some of the romance novels that I've read over the years. For starters, I don't like the fact that Dirty ultimately ended up being an example of insta-love to a certain extent when it comes to the ending of the book; which is a trope that I've always found very annoying when it comes to the romance genre.
Lydia is a likable protagonist, but it frustrated me how naive she came across as being at times throughout the book; especially when it came to her relationship with her ex-fiancée, Chris, and the fact that she apparently hadn't picked up on all of the red flags in regards to Chris keeping his being gay a secret from her. As someone who's bisexual, it really pissed me off that Chris ended up being a major closet case who had basically been planning to marry Lydia so he could use her as his beard, while he carried on a sexual relationship with another guy; all because he came from a rich family, and his parents disapproved of the fact that he's gay. It also annoyed me that Chris' parents seemed determined to portray Lydia as being the villain in the whole scenario, instead of Chris being held accountable for all of his shitty behavior. I just don't think that Scott portrayed the LGBTQ community in a positive light when it came to that aspect of the plot of Dirty. Without completely giving away the ending of the book, I kind of felt like the ending of the book made Lydia come across as having learned absolutely nothing from how horribly rushing into planning to marry Chris had ended up working out for her at the beginning of the book; which really frustrated the hell out of me.
That being said, I did like the fact that Lydia was portrayed as not being a conventionally attractive woman in terms of her looks, and is basically described as being a plus-size woman. Vaughan is also a fairly likable character for the most part, but I also thought that he was a manipulative jerk at times, which really pissed me off. I also felt like the secondary characters were all somewhat underdeveloped. For the record, I appreciated the fact that Dirty was a relatively fast read. Ultimately, I thought that while Dirty wasn't necessarily an altogether bad book, it's only okay at best. After reading the first book in Scott's Stage Dive series (Lick) several years ago, which I also thought was a pretty frustrating book in some ways, and after now having read this book, I'm starting to wonder if Kylie Scott's books just aren't for me when it comes to the romance genre.
My Score: 4 out of 10
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