🎧Audiobook Review🎧

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I want to thank NetGalley for approving me for an ARC of this book. Alice Feeney is one of my auto-buy authors so I was excited to listen to this one.

🫨Twisty
🤫Secrets
👨🏻‍🤝‍👩🏻Multiple POV
⌛Dual Timeline

Alice Feeney never fails to deliver a story with a shocking twist. I found this so easy to listen to and consumed the book in a day. Gripping, gritty and highly entertaining!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Once again Alice feeney offers us readers an amazing psychological thriller. This one had for me a underlying message of troubled family relationships.
The story centres around four very different women Edith, the retired store detective in a care home she hates, Patience is one of the auxiliary staff at the care home the only one Edith likes, Clio Ediths Daughter who's own daughter was kidnapped 20 years ago and Frankie the prison librarian trying to find her daughter who has ran away. Set in two timelines shifting from the baby abduction 20 years prior to the now, This is done so smoothly that it is easy to try to guess what is going to happen next, there are twist that the author wants you to find but there are still many hidden twists designed in a clever way that definitely kept me guessing right till the end.
Despite the heaviness of the story line, kidnap, betrayal, family strain Alice Feeney manages to add some humour to the book and some of the complicated relationships and how they develop were written so well, I honestly wanted the best for each of these women.
The Ladybird connections throughout is such a lovely touch
ALice Feeney is such a fantastic author who writes in such an enthralling manner I never want it to end.
Thankyou to NetGalley, Publishers and of course the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am a huge thriller fan, in particular Alice Feeney. This book follows multiple POVs but the plot centralises around a baby being taken on mothers day in a supermarket. Lots of POVs which feel seemingly unrelated end up interwoven by the end,
Overall I did enjoy this book, however, the multiple POVs did confuse me, I think with Cleo, Frankie and Patience, there was a bit of confusion at times as to who had done what!
Thanks for the opportunity to read and review!

Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Publication date: 03/08/2023
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My first time reading an Alice Feeney book and I don’t think this will be my last. Captivating from the start.
80 year old Edith hates her care home. The only light at the end of the tunnel is her carer Patience but all is not as it seems.
There are so many links and twists in this novel. When I first started reading I couldn’t figure out what was going on but little piece by little piece the dots began to join.
Absolutely fantastic and I’m sure this is going to remain as one of my favourite books.
Thank you to NetGalley, Alice Feeney and Pan Macmillan for this ARC in return for an honest review

Good Bad Girl was my first Alice Feeney read and I absolutely loved it and cannot wait to check out more of her books.

Oo this was bonkers and really hard to get to grips with who is who and what the connection are! Think I've learnt about myself that I have a threshold on how long I can go without having any understanding of the story otherwise I get frustrated by it!

I am pleased I kept going as the story did pick up towards the end and the connections of the ladies all came together. Very good!

Thank you to NetGalley for the book.

How intertwined lives can be. The reader follows an elderly lady in a care home. Edith is still very alert and unhappy at being placed in a care home by her children. She befriends patience, one of the staff. Patience is an enigma. As the story unfolds we follow and try to guess what her story really is. I failed to guess!! An interesting read about human relationships and how we like to be perceived.

Good Bad Girl is the latest from twisty thriller author Alice Feeney. While I liked Daisy Darker (still not sure about the bonkers ending), I didn’t get on with Rock Paper Scissors at all, so I was on the fence about this one but said I’d give it a go.

I got an ARC from NetGalley but actually ended up listening to it from Borrowbox as I fell behind on my reviews this year (that’s a built in resolution for next year right there), and thought it worked well as an audiobook.

Twenty years ago a baby was stolen from her buggy in a supermarket. Back to the present day and a woman had just been murdered in a care home. Somehow the two crimes are linked and three women we meet; Patience, Clio, and Edith are all potential murder suspects. They’re all hiding something but if they work together they could solve both crimes.

This felt confusing for a good portion of the book. It all makes a kind of sense by the end but getting to that point felt a bit arduous at times. One thing I dislike about this author’s writing is the constant use of adages and sayings scattered throughout the book. I noticed it with Daisy Darker too, and I personally find it a bit tedious.

The actual story itself was interesting, and the focus on strained mother/daughter relationships of all kinds was well done and thought provoking. There’s an element to the ending that involved the (very irritating) detective investigating the crimes, that felt a step too far; as a reader I felt like I was being asked to accept one coincidence too many and I didn’t love that.

Overall I think this just wasn’t for me. It has loads of 5 star reviews and die-hard Feeney fans, so I may just be the wrong reader for this particular book.

With many thanks to @netgalley and @panmacmillan for the opportunity to read Good Bad Girl. All opinions my own, as always.

Four very strong women all with their own stories to tell become suspects in a murder. A young girl who is running, a mother looking for her missing daughter, a counsellor who lives alone in a house she cannot afford to live in but just cannot leave and then Edith an elderly lady in a care home. The care home where the murder or is it murders have happened.
A truly heartwarming easy to read story for which the pages just keep on turning. I didn’t even think about trying to predict the ending as I just wanted the story to keep on going.

Unfortunately this book was removed for me to read before I had the chance to send it to my kindle to read

Alice Feeney is great for mysteries and twists and unreliable characters you cannot trust.

Edith is stuck in an old people’s home an utterly miserable. Patience works there and they become friends after she rescued Edith’s dog Dickens. They are planning to break Edith out of the care home when the mysterious death of one of the residents convinces them to leave immediately.

Edith is missing.

Her exasperated daughter, Clio, is worried about her. Her relationship with Edith is strained and there are misunderstandings and bitterness on both sides. There are also a lot of secrets and sadness.

Patience has her own issues with her mother. And is keeping secrets of her own.

This is a slow burner. I was really engaged with the characters individually but had no idea how it was all going to come together. And then, in true Alice Feeney style, it did!

The book explores women’s lives and the complex relationships between mothers and daughters. The characters are complex and flawed and really interesting.

This was a good read. It’s clever and twisty and will keep you engaged right to the last page.

Thank you to Netgalley for my gifted digital copy of Good Bad Girl.

I like to pride myself with the fact that I am usually pretty good at guessing the plot twists in thrillers. Though Alice Feeney kept me completely guessing with this one. Thank you to Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review. I decided to tandem read this as an audio book and an ebook. Narrated by Katherine Press and Stephanie Racine, they added that extra dimension to the story and characters.

We follow the narratives of several women who are at different stages of life as they navigate their way through life's traumas. But are their lives crossing paths coincidentally or has fate thrown them together once again? You won't see the twists coming!!

I enjoyed Alice's with style I have purchased Daisy Darker and His and Hers for my TBR collection- so watch this space.

I love a domestic drama and the premise of this one drew me in.

There are lots of perspectives and stories which keep you interested.

I simply loved it! At the beginning I could not figure what was going on as there were two three stories going on parallelly. But almost mid way into it , I was fully invested. And just when I thought that there could not be anymore twists, the ending just blew my mind! 🐞

Thankyou NetGalley and Pan Mcmillian for the ARC!!!

Twenty years after a baby is stolen from her push-chair, a woman is murdered in a care home. These two crimes are somehow linked. There's a great big tangled web of lies, and one young woman may be the key to unravelling the truth, but how far will those around her go to protect themselves?

The rather unorthodox DCI Chapman is struggling to solve the care home conundrum with “three suspects, two murders, and one victim”.

But, for our four flawed female protagonists (Edith, Clio, Frankie and Patience), the connections that bind them are tightening now that the future is looking uncertain and the past is catching up with the present. Each short chapter is told from one of their points of view; frequently, they see a situation very differently from one another, giving us a chance to glean some clues as to all their intentions - good, bad or maybe it's not that straightforward.

Good Bad Girl is hard to review without exposing spoilers. The central theme is the exploration of good and bad (spoiler to no one, given the title!) and how far we will go to protect long buried secrets, those we love, and ourselves.

No character here is wholly trustworthy or even particularly likeable, but Feeney does an excellent job of digging deep into their emotions, and we have them all here by the bucket load - resentment, disappointment, loneliness, love, mistrust, despair and perhaps most of all regret.

It's no secret I love an immersive thriller, especially one with multiple points of view, crossover timelines and unreliable narrators. And, on paper, Good Bad Girl has it all, but it didn't quite live up to expectations, feeling overly long and drawn out with a predictable enough conclusion.

Not Feeney’s finest, but nevertheless, it's a solid, slow-burning mystery with enough intrigue to keep you turning those pages. 3.5⭐

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read Good Bad Girl in return for an, as always, honest review.

We know that I'm not an instant thriller grabber - I get anxious just thinking about them, but when I get stuck in I'm in my element! This book did just that! I loved the twists and turns of a full family dynamic that is just so dysfunctional you have no idea what's around the corner.

I was so engrossed and I literally consumed this - it was also our book club pick and I just couldn't wait so devoured it before the actual read-along! It was also my first tickle of Alice Feeney and I can now say it won't be my last!

I was sent a copy of Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney to read and review by NetGalley. I enjoy Alice Feeney's writing and this book was no exception. I would, however, describe it more of a mystery novel rather than an out and out thriller. There was a lot of content and many twists and turns, some of which made me a little confused, but I didn’t find it actually ‘thrilling’ at all. There were quite a few ‘Ah’ moments when things fell into place and I enjoyed these. As I say, I wouldn’t class this as a ‘Thriller’ as such but it is a very readable and intriguing novel. Well worth a look!

Really enjoyed this. It was my first Alice Feeney so wasn’t sure what I was up against but I quickly gelled with her writing style.

Ok it’s Mother’s Day, you have just wished that the baby would disappear and the next glance the baby’s gone. Stolen in plain sight.
Twenty years later, 2 deaths, 3 heartbroken mothers and 4 suspects. And finally questions are answered.

This is my first book by Alice Feeney but it won’t be my last!
For a book with multiple timelines and POVs on paper this shouldn’t work for me but I was hooked.
Every time I thought I knew where the plot was going it would spiral in a completely new and unexpected way and I genuinely gasped at one point!
I fell in love with the characters and was able to become completely lost within this thrilling, fast paced mystery. There’s nothing better than that moment when the world around you stops and it is just you in that world that only a great story can create.

I can’t wait to delve into the authors back catalogue and saviour more of her masterful plots!

I've read a few novels by the author but for some reason I could not connect with Good Bad Girl. I was intrigued by the synopsis but it's a fairly slow paced novel and I initially found it confusing with too many points of view. I became most immersed in Clio's POV but once the narrative moved away from this I found it much less gripping.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.