Good Girls by Amanda Brookfield
Genre: Women's fiction, chick lit
Read: 12th October 2019
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 8th October 2019)
★ 1 star
When I started GOOD GIRLS by Amanda Brooksfield, I had no idea why I requested it. It is not my usual genre, and the synopsis wasn't even particularly grabbing either. So I was puzzled what had attracted it to me in the first place. Even so, I began in the hope that I would discover its attractions. But it was not so.
I don't know if it was my frame of mind, but I found the characters irritating - particularly Kat - and I just didn't want to know anything about her. I felt she was a bit of an entitled bitch and treated her sister like crap. I felt for Eleanor (who was a little like me), the unnoticed unappreciated sister. It seemed that Kat just took advantage of her older sister's good nature.
GOOD GIRLS is the story of sisters Eleanor and Kat, who were once close but became estranged as they grew older - each of their lives moving in a different direction. Then fate cruelly brings them together once again - but is it too lat for the sisters?
The story begins with Eleanor rushing to her sister's side after receiving surgery for bowel cancer. Surgery was successful but Kat was an irritating patient and a complete pain in the butt. She didn't seem to appreciate Ellie's efforts at all being there for her. Their father resides nearby in a care home, suffering from dementia. Ellie doesn't get to visit him as much living in London, and the travel to Surrey is too costly to make the trip on a regular basis.
Kat has always been the popular sister, the one everyone loves. She even married a rich man, produced three perfect children, lives in a lovely perfect house and has the most amazing perfect life. Ellie, on the other hand, is too tall, too awkward, too nice, to unnoticeable and despite being incredibly clever with a sports degree from Oxford, she lives in a small flat in London with an unexciting job, no money and no one interesting in her life. Both girls are products of their upbringing with their somewhat stern clergyman father and their mentally ill mother who committed suicide when they were young.
An obviously dysfunctional family from the start, this story focuses on the tension between the sisters. Told through varying perspectives, primarily Eleanor and Nick (a childhood friend of the girls), the story drifts back in time to when the sisters young to when Ellie left for university. I always enjoy dual timeline narratives but with this book I just found myself becoming more irritated with Kat as the story progressed.
The promise of something I'm not entirely sure of gives way to a somewhat slow and drawn out story with people living miserable lives and basically being incredibly horrible to each other. I really struggled with this book and didn't enjoy the journey at all and spent most of the time waiting for something interesting to happen...which invariably didn't.
I feel really terrible about giving a bad review but in all honesty I couldn't seem to connect to the characters or the find the story remotely interesting. I'm not sure what genre the book is meant to fall into, but I would categorise it as a family drama.
While I didn't enjoy GOOD GIRLS that isn't to say others will. I urge you to make up your own mind, as I can't categorically state whether this is a bad book, a bad story or just not appealing...because everyone is different. Everyone's tastes are different and what appeals to me may not be the same for you.
I would like to thank #AmandaBrookfield, #NetGalley and #BoldwoodBooks for an ARC of #GoodGirls in exchange for an honest review.
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