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A review by historysoverture
The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong
3.0
2.5 stars. It was fine.
The way the ending scene was set up was pretty cool, but often the timeline was too jumbled for my taste. I liked seeing the past to understand how we got to the present situation, but having flashbacks in flashbacks made things a bit confusing at times.
Also, I was onboard with the plot up until the reveal that our main character is a psychopath. I'm sure that the "mom isn't actually a bad person and the main character is actually just a violent predator" narrative would totally work for some people. But I really hate mental illness being the main driving factor behind a criminal's actions in a thriller. People with mental illness are significantly more likely to be the victim of a crime than the perpetrator. And there's already so much stigma around people with mental illnesses, so why make it worse? Not a terrible book, but not for me.
The way the ending scene was set up was pretty cool, but often the timeline was too jumbled for my taste. I liked seeing the past to understand how we got to the present situation, but having flashbacks in flashbacks made things a bit confusing at times.
Also, I was onboard with the plot up until the reveal that our main character is a psychopath. I'm sure that the "mom isn't actually a bad person and the main character is actually just a violent predator" narrative would totally work for some people. But I really hate mental illness being the main driving factor behind a criminal's actions in a thriller. People with mental illness are significantly more likely to be the victim of a crime than the perpetrator. And there's already so much stigma around people with mental illnesses, so why make it worse? Not a terrible book, but not for me.