Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney
Genre: Psychological thriller
Read: 15th August 2023
Published: 3rd August 2023
★★★★★ 5 stars
DESCRIPTION:
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.
The Queen of Twists, bestselling author of Daisy Darker and Rock Paper Scissors Alice Feeney, returns with another gripping mystery filled with drama and her trademark surprises in Good Bad Girl.
MY THOUGHTS:
"Sometimes bad things happen to good people, so good people have to do bad things." 🐞
This story begins at THE END. 🐞
And it ends at THE BEGINNING. 🐞
Two Mother's Days, twenty years apart, collide as this complex tale unravels from the end to the beginning. And four very different women find themselves tangled in Alice Feeney's latest intricate web.
Twenty years ago, a baby disappears from a pram in a supermarket and is never seen again despite police's best efforts to track her down. The mother is distraught as her whole world as she knows it inevitably changes. Six months later, they bury an empty coffin in an attempt to gain closure if not answers.
In the present day, we meet Frankie. She likes to think of herself as a good bad girl. Life has taught her that people can't be trusted and the only thing you can count on is numbers. So that's what she does. She counts. Three times to open the door. Seventy five steps to the next gate. Twenty five to her car. Numbers calm her. But what she really loves is books. To lose herself in a world of fiction. And as a prison librarian Frankie's job is to ensure that everyone has access to books. She built this library to what it is today. She taught some of the inmates to read. She gave them an appreciation of books. Because in books you can lose yourself and they can be a saviour to your hurting heart just by burying yourself within their pages. And every day she leaves the prison and returns home to her narrowboat and wishes for her missing daughter to return home to her.
Edith's daughter Clio is a therapist who is need of therapy herself. She lives in a pink house with a very expensive collection that remains private to all but her. She tries to help others but fails to help herself. And when it comes to her mother, she has little care to spare. After tricking her mother into signing papers which gave her power of attorney and removed her from her home, she then dumped her into the Windsor Care Home after relieving herself of her mother's beloved dog Dickens.
Plucky Edith Elliot is high spirited and a prisoner in the Windsor Care Home. She has a plan to escape God's waiting room and return to her own home where she was happiest with her dog Dickens who was taken from her and dumped in a shelter, and she longs to take long walks with him again as she used to. But little do the powers that be know, Edith isn't stupid and she has a plan.
On Patience's first day of work at the care home, she found Edith crying in an armchair. It too was Edith's first day at the home and she was distraught over having lost her home and and her dog. When she discovered what had happened to Dickens to spent most of her savings and went to the shelter so she could adopt him. Now she brings him into the care home every so often so that Edith and Dickens are reunited once again.
But now Edith is missing!!
Enter DCI Charlotte Chapman (what a colourful character - in more ways than one...lol). But it seems she is not here to investigate a missing resident, but a murdered employee. And she has THREE suspects to TWO murders with only ONE victim.
The story unfolds through the distinctive narratives of each of the four women - Frankie, Patience, Edith and Clio. But how are all these women linked? And what do they have to do with the murders? Frankie has spent a year searching for her daughter which has brought her to Covent Garden, but will she ever find her?
Every nuance, every fibre, every braid of the story is intricately entwined as we try to untangle each invisible thread. Alice Feeney has a very distinctive and unique style and while this tale is not as dark as some of her previous ones, it is just as twisty and just as clever...given (also) that she wrote it at a very difficult time personally for herself. I normally prefer dialogue driven novels but I an enamoured by Feeney's unique style that she has me turning the pages at the speed of light as I try to untangle the web she has cleverly spun. She examines several issues surrounding motherhood like postpartum depression and the struggles that comes with motherhood. And yet still she thrills as the twists keep coming as slowly the threads begin to unravel to reveal the bigger picture. And while I did figure out pretty much every twist along the way, there was one I DID NOT see coming which left me speechless for a minute, as I went back and re-read what I just read to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me and I really did just read that.
I have only read three novels by Alice Feeney and she never ceases to thrill or chill me. I love her books which, while they are categorised as thrillers, Feeney has successfully shaped her own style of genre. I love how they are each different, exploring nuance and innuendo, whilst being thoroughly entertaining as well. I don't find her a slow burn at all though some readers might so be patient with this one, it really is worth it. 🐞
I would like to thank #AliceFeeney, #Netgalley and #PanMacmillan for an ARC of #GoodBadGirl in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Alice Feeney is an author and former BBC journalist. Her debut novel, Sometimes I Lie, was a New York Times and international bestseller. It has been translated into over twenty languages, and is being made into a TV series by Ellen DeGeneres and Warner Bros. starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Her books have been translated into over twenty-five languages, and have been optioned for major screen adaptations. Including her novel Rock Paper Scissors, which is being made into a TV series by the producer of The Crown.
Alice has lived in London and Sydney and has now settled in Devon, where she lives with her husband and dog..
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