Good Bad Girl: Book Review and Storyline

Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney is a crime thriller intertwined with twisted family relationships.

Four women narrate the story,

Frankie: A woman who works in a prison library whose daughter has recently left home after an altercation,

Edith: An older woman who now lives in a nursing home and is disappointed with her daughter for forcing her to move there,

Patience: A young woman who works at the care home and becomes quite close to Edith, and

Clio: A middle-aged woman and Edith’s estranged daughter, whose relationship with her mother has only gone downhill over the years.

The story unfolds, with alternating chapters written from the point of view of each character, revealing their backstory and linking them to the murder of the care home’s owner.

After many tedious chapters, the characters are fully revealed, the reason for what they did in the past is unveiled, and the mystery of the murder is resolved.

Despite the promising premise, the execution falls flat. The author devotes a significant portion of the book to building characters and sharing unnecessary details, which, disappointingly, have no relevance to the story. The murder mystery is also revealed through the characters’ narration, rather than being uncovered in parts, leaving readers to piece together hints and clues.

Despite having used many words and pages to describe each character, they seem underdeveloped, so much so that each POV seems like being narrated by the same person.

As a reader who has enjoyed Alice Feeney’s previous works, such as Sometimes I Lie and Rock Paper Scissors, I found Good Bad Girl to be a disappointment. The book, although it had a good premise, did not live up to the standards set by her other works.