It's Mother's Day and a six-month old baby is stolen from her carriage during a trip to the store. The mother is suffering from postpartum depression. That was twenty years ago. There's very little we know about anyone at the start of Alice Feeney's new mystery thriller. A group of women are then introduced in the present day. Frankie works in a prison as a librarian. Her eighteen-year-old daughter ran away a year ago. Patience is a young woman who works at a home for seniors in London. She's become close with one of the residents - eighty-year-old Edith who has a troubled relationship with her daughter Clio. Edith believes that her friend May was murdered within the residence and wants to get out, but daughter Clio doesn't want her mother living with her. Patience gets involved and finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation. It takes a while for everything to come together and ultimately the connection to the abducted baby is revealed.
You might get a little confused as information is slowly doled out. It takes a while before all the pieces of Feeney's Good Bad Girl come together and everything starts to make sense. Feeney's books can get pretty dark. Her latest, while clever and engaging, did not have the same level of darkness as some of her others, but it did have lots of twists and surprises. I appreciated the change up. This is more of a story about mothers and daughters. We know that everyone in the book has done something bad. We just don't know what they've done to create such inner turmoil. Until Feeney reveals each of their back stories. I have to think that one of the main characters was named Patience because that is exactly what is required when reading this book.
I loved Feeney's line, “The world is full of people who are good at being bad, and people who are bad at being good.” Many thanks to Flatiron Books for the opportunity to read this book in advance.
Rated 4.25 out of 5 stars.
Mystery Thriller.
Publication Date: August 29, 2023.
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