Genre: Thriller | Mystery | Crime
Release Date: Expected 3rd August 2023
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Sometimes bad things happen to good people, so good people have to do bad things.
Twenty years after a baby is stolen from her push-chair, a woman is murdered in a care home. The two crimes are somehow linked, and a good bad girl may be the key to discovering the truth.
Edith may have been tricked into a nursing home, but at eighty-years-young, she’s planning her escape. Patience works there, cleaning up mess and bonding with Edith, a kindred spirit. But Patience is lying to Edith about almost everything.
Edith’s own daughter, Clio, won’t speak to her. And someone new is about to knock on Clio’s door . . . and their intentions aren’t good.
With every reason to distrust each other, the women must solve a mystery with three suspects, two murders, and one victim. If they do, they might just find out what happened to the baby who disappeared, the mother who lost her, and the connections that bind them.
Twenty years after a baby is stolen from her push-chair, a woman is murdered in a care home. The two crimes are somehow linked, and a good bad girl may be the key to discovering the truth.
Edith may have been tricked into a nursing home, but at eighty-years-young, she’s planning her escape. Patience works there, cleaning up mess and bonding with Edith, a kindred spirit. But Patience is lying to Edith about almost everything.
Edith’s own daughter, Clio, won’t speak to her. And someone new is about to knock on Clio’s door . . . and their intentions aren’t good.
With every reason to distrust each other, the women must solve a mystery with three suspects, two murders, and one victim. If they do, they might just find out what happened to the baby who disappeared, the mother who lost her, and the connections that bind them.
"One person's truth is rarely exactly the same as someone else's. Truth tends to stretch and bend out of shape to best fit its owner."
Alice Feeney is one of the few authors that I can genuinely say always manages to fool me — they are the absolute queen of twists and turns so I had painfully high expectations about this book considering the way that Daisy Darker had me ranting for days afterwards. And thankfully, I was not disappointed.
Good Bad Girl is a grey, blurry story where nothing is as it seems — our main characters are lying to us, to each other, to themselves and they exist somewhere outside of being entirely good or bad in the most exciting and confusing ways. There’s secrets we know are being kept from us, and then even more just waiting in the shadows. But even with all that, I loved them; and desperately wanted them to have their answers and closure as much as I wanted them for myself.
The story moved quickly but quietly — the tension settling in the small details and the doubt, building up to something feverish and intense as the mystery starts to finally piece together. The narration was clear but had this way of making every single thing feel suspicious, framing every normal scene as something sinister that had me on edge from the very first page. We jumped between people and places in a way that was almost disorienting but engaging — Feeney doesn’t let you relax for a single moment, constantly making you question if you’ve FINALLY got everything figured out before throwing something else at you. And underneath all the murder and betrayal is a lot of emotion and heartbreak that was so human you couldn’t help but smile.
This is a story about bad things, but damn it’s good. To quote the author themselves, "A good book can cure loneliness, change minds, or even change the world. A good book is nothing less than magic."
Good Bad Girl is a grey, blurry story where nothing is as it seems — our main characters are lying to us, to each other, to themselves and they exist somewhere outside of being entirely good or bad in the most exciting and confusing ways. There’s secrets we know are being kept from us, and then even more just waiting in the shadows. But even with all that, I loved them; and desperately wanted them to have their answers and closure as much as I wanted them for myself.
The story moved quickly but quietly — the tension settling in the small details and the doubt, building up to something feverish and intense as the mystery starts to finally piece together. The narration was clear but had this way of making every single thing feel suspicious, framing every normal scene as something sinister that had me on edge from the very first page. We jumped between people and places in a way that was almost disorienting but engaging — Feeney doesn’t let you relax for a single moment, constantly making you question if you’ve FINALLY got everything figured out before throwing something else at you. And underneath all the murder and betrayal is a lot of emotion and heartbreak that was so human you couldn’t help but smile.
This is a story about bad things, but damn it’s good. To quote the author themselves, "A good book can cure loneliness, change minds, or even change the world. A good book is nothing less than magic."
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for an honest review. Please check content warnings before reading as this title contains subjects that may upset readers including child loss, prison, violence and murder.
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