[ARC Review] Good Girl Bad by S.A. McEwen
Rebecca Giovanni woke up to the worst possible situation: her husband and oldest daughter are gone, the car is gone, and her youngest daughter isn't even awake yet. And as more people get involved - her ex-husband, her friends, her daughter's friend, the police - the story only gets more convoluted. What happened the night her family was torn apart? And was Rebecca herself the one responsible? Told in multiple, fragmented perspectives leading readers down a dark, twisted road, Good Girl Bad is an unforgettable thriller about the lengths we'll go to in order to feel love and connected.
Good Girl Bad was such a fabulous, twisty read. Right away, McEwen pulls readers in with the unknown: what happened to Leroy, Tabby, and Charlie? Readers will spend the rest of the book jumping through multiple perspectives - both ones in the know and ones that have no idea what really happened that fateful night and what caused it all to fell apart for Rebecca and her family. I thought the characters were all so well done here; with everyone telling their own side of the story, it was easy to simultaneously feel hatred, shock, and sympathy towards the main characters. I don't remember the last book I read where I felt this emotionally attached to pretty much every single character. Oh, I definitely wanted to hate certain characters - the ones society would quickly label villains - but McEwen did such a wonderful job at humanizing them all and it was hard to be cold to even the worst personalities. None of them were perfect, but they were exactly what the story needed to succeed.
I thought the chapter layouts were nicely done. McEwen does jump around a lot in the timeline and switches perspectives frequently, but it was easy to follow along even when narrators were not readily identified. I actually thought rushing from perspective to perspective so blindly was exhilarating, adding to my inability to put this story down.
There was a lot involved in this story, and much of it I can't comment on without giving away the plot. Suffice to say that I loved the way McEwen wrote this thriller; with so many voices, it's hard to know who is reliable and who isn't - and many characters end up crossing that line as the story evolves. The amount of unknowns in the plot pulled me in right to the very end. These characters give nothing away until the end, and I thought the story was even more thrilling because of it.
I definitely recommend Good Girl Bad for thriller fans who love a sketchy narrator (or two).
A huge thank you to the author and Grey's Promotions for sharing a review copy of Good Girl Bad.
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Release date: 1/11/22
Format: eARC
eARC provided via: Grey's Promotions
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