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lovelymisanthrope's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
As an avid reader of Alice Feeney's work, I was so excited to pick up this new title from her.
"Good Bad Girl" follows a cast of women who are all hiding something. Twenty years ago, a baby was kidnapped in a grocery store, and in the present day a woman is murdered in a nursing home. These two crimes are somehow connected and the entire cast of women are about to find out how their stories are meant to come together.
I was very invested in this story from the beginning. All of these characters are somewhat morally gray, and they made decisions that I was not entirely on board with, but that is what made them interesting. I really empathized with Patience because she has such a good heart and it is evident from the first page how much she is struggling. She is working so tirelessly to save up enough money to be able to start a new life, and my heart just went out to her. I was also sympathetic towards Edith in the beginning. She feels like her family just left her to die in the nursing home, and she wants nothing more to just go home and be with her dog around her own things.
Something many of these characters had in common was that they are mothers, which I think provides interesting discourse on what it means to be a mother. Edith, Clio, and Frankie are all mothers who have made sacrifices for their daughters, and they all have strained relationships with their own mothers. It is impossible to be the perfect mom, but they each have been a good bad mom.
Even though I anticipated some of the twists in the story, I was still entirely invested, and I did not anticipate everything that ultimately happened. Alice Feeney is great at creating amazing turns and character developments that I do not see coming.
I look forward to enjoying more from Alice Feeney in the future.
"Good Bad Girl" follows a cast of women who are all hiding something. Twenty years ago, a baby was kidnapped in a grocery store, and in the present day a woman is murdered in a nursing home. These two crimes are somehow connected and the entire cast of women are about to find out how their stories are meant to come together.
I was very invested in this story from the beginning. All of these characters are somewhat morally gray, and they made decisions that I was not entirely on board with, but that is what made them interesting. I really empathized with Patience because she has such a good heart and it is evident from the first page how much she is struggling. She is working so tirelessly to save up enough money to be able to start a new life, and my heart just went out to her. I was also sympathetic towards Edith in the beginning. She feels like her family just left her to die in the nursing home, and she wants nothing more to just go home and be with her dog around her own things.
Even though I anticipated some of the twists in the story, I was still entirely invested, and I did not anticipate everything that ultimately happened. Alice Feeney is great at creating amazing turns and character developments that I do not see coming.
I look forward to enjoying more from Alice Feeney in the future.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Abandonment, Child death, Kidnapping, Toxic relationship, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Grief, and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Sexual assault and Sexual harassment
Minor: Pregnancy
velsbooknook's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
4.5
Alice Feeney has easily become an auto-buy author for me over the past few years and with Good Bad Girl she surprised me again! I'm not going to talk much about the story because I think it is best to go in blind. I was hooked from the beginning even though I was very confused for the first 70 pages, because I had to stop and think about how the characters were related to each other. The story is told by four POVs and takes place in past and present. It was a real page-turner for me and I kept making the wildest guesses while reading. Close to the end I was like "what?!" and I was flabbergasted by twists and turns. The characters definitely made some bold decisions but I still can't say that I disliked them. They all had their unique charm to them.
"Sometimes bad things happen to good people, so good people have to do bad things."
A very fun and fast-paced mystery in my opinion!
Thank you to Alice Feeney, Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
"Sometimes bad things happen to good people, so good people have to do bad things."
A very fun and fast-paced mystery in my opinion!
Thank you to Alice Feeney, Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Murder, Child death, and Kidnapping
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