This book had me hooked until the end when it completely unraveled to the point of not being... good. Things made sense until the extremes came into play, extremes that weren't necessary.

Beautiful Bad tells the story of Maddie and Ian and their tumultuous relationship. It is told through multiple points of view and a fractured timeline. While it did take a little getting used to the timeline being all over the place, within the first 50 pages or so it was easy to settle into the plot.

This was a psychological thriller that didn't give up the answers until the bitter end. When it seemed to be going into one direction, it quickly shot into another. The ending is jolting, but somewhat satisfying. It is a complete story that keeps you guessing even after you have finished reading. Solid 4 star read.

Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward is a tale of friendship, love and marriage told in a twisted tale where one would believe any of those would mean happiness, but for our characters it leads to a 911 call. Told from various point of views and spanning years, we meet Maddie, her friend Jo and the man she eventually marries, Ian. What ties them together and what tears them apart?

This is truly Maddie’s story and as a narrator, she quickly draws readers into her journey as we discover the journey that leads to the 911 call. Taken back and forth in time, we learn what has transpired over the years between the relationships around Maddie and her fears. This story was twisted and full of surprises!

Happy reading!

This was such a whirlwind ride. Definitely kept me on my toes as I read it, right until the very end.

Maddie is a wife and a mother who would do anything to protect her family and those she loves. After college Maddie decides she is going to to go Bulgaria to write and tutor. She isn't quite alone as her friend Joanna, is not too far away in Macedonia. When she visits Joanna it's always a good time, even though they are in a war-torn country. When Maddie meets Ian, there is an instant connection, but time and opportunity are never on their side, so they see each other when they can, and are friends for a very long time. Eventually, they are able to get together and build a life and start a family. But everything isn't as it seems. Ian is suffering from PTSD from his many years serving as protection in Iraq, Bosnia, and other countries. And Maddie has anxiety about it all. Will their relationship last, or will the events of their pasts be too much for their future to handle.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin-Park Row for the opportunity to read and review this book.

The story starts with a call to 911 and you can hear a woman and child in distress. The book takes you back and forth from Maddie's time in Bulgaria, to the days and weeks leading up to this 911 call. I will admit the very beginning drew me in, but then all the in between felt very unnecessary. Until you get to the end and you see everything unfold. I definitely did not see the end coming and I was pleasantly surprised.

Beautiful Bad drew me in from the beginning with the 911 call. I was disappointed a few chapters in when it seems as though the whole incident was forgotten. Then when it popped back up, I didn't even remember the characters from that time. So that is why I gave the book the lower rating. I would like to see the finished book to see if there were any differences. I read an interview with the author that said that this book started off as a memoir, but her editor convinced her to change it into fiction. I think the middle parts where the memoir that got thrown out.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and I stayed up way past my bedtime once I reached the 60% mark to finish it. The ending was really good and it made up for the slow middle. I look forward to reading more by Annie Ward.

What an incredible book! I was captured into its pages by the first chapter which starts with a frantic 911 call. Maddie and Jo are best friends. They are both working in war torn countries when they meet Ian. These three people are the main characters in this book. They are very complex and well drawn characters. The book alternates between past and present which works well. It is filled with unbelievable twists and turns. The explosive ending blew my mind! I did not even see it coming! You will be on the edge of your seat, holding your breath. This book is so well written. If you like psychological suspense you will love Beautiful Bad! Absolutely amazing storyteller! I can't wait for the next book by this author. Yes, it is that good! You don't want to miss this one!! My review simply can't do this book justice. You need to grab this book. It will devour you!! Highly, highly recommend!!

Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward held a lot of promise to be a new, twisty take on marital problems that turn deadly.

The story follows Ian and Maddie who have a very weird relationship. They’ve been together a long time and through a lot of different scenarios. It all leads up to this shocking crime. I have to admit fairly quick that I did not finish this book. It’s not necessarily that it was bad, because the plot has a lot of potential. The writing was a bit too choppy for me and jumped around in the timeline, which confused me right from the start. I also feel that mystery thriller novels like this should have a punch to the gut right at the beginning to hook the reader, and this story didn’t do that for me.

I do like the idea behind this book, but the execution was definitely what was off for me. I also feel like sometimes there was a lot going on to the point where it was overkill. Too many details, too much information, can be a bad thing in some stories. I want to have my imagination be able to do a bit of the work.

While I may not have enjoyed this book, I always encourage other people to check it out because while something might not strike me, it may be just what someone else will love. Unfortunately for me, this one just didn’t strike the right cords and I wasn’t able to finish it. I’ll be checking out Ward’s next novel hoping for something I will love.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley. Thank-you to the Author, the publisher and to Netgalley. This is the first book by Annie Ward that I have read and I enjoyed it. It was a fast moving book, with some twists and turns. The only thing that bothered me, was on the front cover of the book, there is a description that says "The Perfect Marriage Leads to the Perfect Crime". I think this is misleading, at no time did I think they had a perfect marriage, I don't think that any of the characters in the book thought they had a perfect marriage, so this description confused me.

This was a very enjoyable read with many twists and turns. The story starts with a woman, Maddie, trying to find a psychiatrist after having suffered a head trauma. The story then switches back and forth 10 or more years to when Maddie lived in Macedonia and often visited her friend in Bosnia. During one of these visits she meets her current husband who is currently away travelling. A good thriller which I couldn't put down until I had finished it with a surprise ending. Definitely recommend!

This is such an intricate, dark story with so many layers. It’s the story of Maddie and Ian, and how they meet overseas. Their complicated, sometimes disturbing relationship unfolds and you start to see how broken Ian is. I found the story to be really interesting and the ending was pretty surprising. Great read.

Any book that starts with an exciting 911 call gets my attention. BEAUTIFUL BAD by Annie Ward is a psychological thriller that centers around three characters: Maddie (the wife), Ian (the husband), and Joanna (the best friend). In the beginning, we learn that someone has been killed, but you don't find out who it is until the end of the book.

Going back and forth in the storyline between the present and the past, we learn the story behind these three characters. We also know that the killer was one of these those characters...or was it? Was it a marriage gone bad? A post-soldier with PTSD? An abused wife? A disenchanted best friend?

BEAUTIFUL BAD is not a story I would recommend to my middle school students, but I would recommend it to my friends if you want a book to curl up with that will keep you guessing. To be honest, I did start figuring out the mystery about halfway through the book, but I wanted to keep reading to find out if I was right. There were some great twists to the story that I hadn't expected, which was fun too.

I was given this book for my honest review. It was published just this month.

Really interesting premise but I went from loving the book the first half to not really sure what I thought the second half. It was worth my time and I finished it, just not sure if I would recommend.

I’m giving Beautiful Bad a 2.5/5 stars. This book sounded so intriguing to me when I first saw it, and I was so excited to finally get to read it. And for most of the book, I was absolutely loving it. The plot wasn’t very fast moving, and it jumped around a lot, but I could still see that it was building up towards something big. But the ending, in my opinion, was a mess. Where the plot went was very interesting and quite disturbing, but there was so much left unanswered and unsaid. A lot of the information in the end was also just directly told to the reader and there wasn’t much speculation to be had. The characters all became completely different, and I felt like they were acting out of character. This book could have been amazing if the ending had just been different. How it ended was fine, but the execution of that ending was far off what this book this deserved. I’m sure other people liked the ending and the book as a whole, but it just felt awkward and wrong to me. Other than the ending, I loved the book. That’s why it’s getting a half rating from me. I loved the depth and imperfections of the characters and just how unique this book was. The plot jumped around a lot between the different timelines, which I actually really liked. It gave you just enough of a taste of each timeline before it would switch. Without much action for most of the book, that was a great way for the author to keep the reader engaged. I do think that I will try to pick up another book from this author to see if any of her other books are a little bit better.

I received a free, advanced copy of this book through NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Title: Beautiful Bad
Author: Annie Ward
Genre: Psychological thriller
Rating: 3.0 out of 5

An aborted 911-call brings an officer to a quiet house, with signs of a struggle and blood. Lots of blood. A terrified child and two frightened, battered women, along with the dead husband of one of the women tell the same story: crazy, ex-military man snaps and tries to strangle his wife’s best friend, so his wife kills him in self-defense.

But to get the whole story, you must go back in time to when Maddie and Ian first met, back in the war-torn Balkans where she and Jo lived and worked and played, and Ian was a bodyguard. Back to when Maddie came home after 9-11 and struggled to start her life over, and Ian abandoned her for nine years. Back to their fledgling relationship and new marriage, when Ian wanted a quiet country life and Maddie wanted to travel and explore, and instead they had a baby. Back to that night in the forest camping, where Maddie was injured, but she doesn’t remember how.

Only by going back do you learn what happened now.

I finished reading this, but it was a struggle. Maddie is an unreliable—and for me, unlikable—narrator, and Jo is…erratic. So is Ian. Basically, none of the relationships in this story made sense to me. Obsession, maybe, dependence, surely, but love and caring? Nope. Didn’t see it. The ending is supposed to be a shock, but…it wasn’t. The signs are there all along and aren’t exactly subtle.

Annie Ward lived and worked in the Balkans, was a Fulbright Scholar, and now writes novels. Beautiful Bad is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Park Row via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)

Blog: The Life & Times of a Book Addict

REVIEW:

It all started with an emotional 911 phone call and a visit by the police to a quiet well-manicured neighborhood...

Beautiful Bad had a really good beginning that grabbed my attention. I would consider this book to be more of a slow burn suspense/thriller story. The book is told mainly from Maddie’s point of view along with Ian’s POV jumping in here and there as the book progresses.

Maddie was an interesting character to get to know; though I couldn’t really connect with any of the characters. That’s probably the point with a book like this. My only major complaint was that there were times when I questioned why Maddie and Ian were even together. I didn’t really believe in their love story.

Aside from that, I thought that Beautiful Bad was well written and the author did a good job of building suspense and creating intriguing characters. I liked how the story flip-flops between the past and the present; before the incident and after the incident; which helped to draw the suspense out. I thought I pretty much had it all figured out on how everything would end. I was right about some things, but there were a couple surprises and twists at the end that I hadn’t expected.


RATING: 3½ out of 5.

MY REVIEW- Thank you TLC Book

ours and Park Row Books for gifting me a copy of this book , in exchange of an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I rate this book 3.5 out of 5 Stars.

This is one of those kind of books that is going to draw a line in the middle of the sand, people who love it will be on one side, and those who disliked it will be on the other, and then on the sidelines will be the ones who just flat out liked it.

I loved the strong start, to this book. I love being gripped by the first chapter, it sets a good precedence, and I feel like I can read the book at a much faster pace. I read a lot of Thrillers, so I love when this happens!

I did find the book a tad bit predictable, and there were parts I struggled with, but that’s to be expected with momentum building thrillers. I enjoyed Ward’s writing style, it wasn’t generic, and over dramatic, she didn’t use a lot of jargon, it flowed nicely. For me, it as a one more chapter kind of book. I am glad this book turned out so well for me, because it was a very highly anticipated one for me!

First, I would like to thank Park Row (Harlequin) Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with a free Kindle ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Annie Ward’s "Beautiful Bad" transports the reader between third-world war-stricken countries and the small town of Meadowlark, Kansas as it follows multiple timelines. Maddie lives a life of thrills and living on the edge of danger as an instructor and travel writer in her twenties, where she meets Ian, a British bodyguard with a dark allure. Twenty-six years later, we find Maddie in the present, in which she is now married to Ian in Kansas, where they live with their young son Charlie despite Maddie’s worldly nature. We also find Diane, a patrol cop, entering an active crime scene at the couple’s home where an ominous pool of blood confirms that someone inside that house is dead.

Ms. Ward does a fantastic job of making the jumps between timelines fluid for the reader. Nothing is more aggravating than struggling to orient oneself from chapter to chapter, but Ms. Ward bridges the transitions expertly. In order to gain context for how we have come to the point where someone has been murdered, we must understand each character’s past. The reader accompanies Maddie as she visits her eccentric psychologist, who is determined to establish that Maddie has suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) at the hands of her husband, despite Maddie’s insistence that she fell. The reader follows Ian through his numerous jobs in the military and in security, where he suffers near-death and otherwise traumatizing experiences that have led to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Both Maddie and Ian live in paranoia and tend to catastrophize world events, imagining those dangers coming to their small town and destroying the ones they love.

Overall, I was completely engrossed in this book, finding myself with the urge to read at stoplights (which I avoided, painfully). Everything leading up to the end was a fantastic experience; it is just the end itself that left me feeling at a loss. Perhaps I do not agree with the author’s choice of direction, but I also feel that this was the least developed part of the book. I can see how she came to the decision to end it in the way she did, but I do not feel she expresses those reasons adequately for the reader, especially if the reader has no prior understanding of TBI or PTSD. For this reason, I feel that a near-perfect book was cheated of the perfect rating it deserved, and I feel that 4.5 stars is appropriate.

I would recommend this book for anyone interested in psychological suspense and domestic thrillers.
#breakingbad #netgalley

Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward is a great example of a book that I loved for the first half or so, then changed my mind about once the story took a sharp turn. Told in alternating viewpoints and timelines, the story of Maddie and Ian’s relationship unfolds from courtship to marriage—culminating in The Day of the Killing.

Maddie and Ian meet when she’s working as a travel writer overseas and he’s in the British Army. Maddie divides her time between writing and visiting her best friend, Joanna, an international aid worker.

When Maddie first meets Ian through mutual friends, she isn’t left with the best first impression of him. But over time, Ian charms his way into her good graces. Although Joanna attempts to steer Maddie away from Ian, Maddie follows her heart and falls in love with him.

Sixteen years later, Maddie and Ian are married with a son, Charlie, and living in Maddie’s Kansas hometown. She and Jo have had a falling out and haven’t spoken in some time. Worse yet, Maddie has had a horrible accident that took place while out camping with Ian and Charlie. The accident has left her disfigured and with no memory of what happened that night.

As Maddie attempts to recover her memories through writing therapy with a psychologist, she confesses her fear about Ian’s increasingly volatile personality. Maddie needs to get to the truth and she will protect her son at any cost.

There’s a lot to unpack in this story. As I mentioned, I enjoyed it quite a bit for the first stretch, until some of the major plot points happen and I wasn’t sure where the story was going.

When the big twist is revealed, I was actually pretty disappointed. I didn’t think that the resolution lived up to the building suspense of the first part of the story. I also didn’t love the ending, which left me feeling as if something was missing.

Overall, I wanted more of an explosive twist and that isn’t present here. I also felt that the second half of the book isn’t quite as cohesive as the first part. Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t for me.

I LOVED this book for so many reasons. It was hard to put down . The writing style was totally cinematic and engaging. It was also a pinch heartbreaking - I'm a huge fan!

This one started with a bang, quickly began to fizzle out, had some excitement near the end, then something else quite startling happens that is just briefly mentioned and the end.

I honestly almost didn't finish this one numerous times. The very beginning was very interesting but the my mind just wandered for the next 70% or so. Drew me back in at the end but it was all just so predictable that I couldn't appreciate it at all. I felt that the timeline back and forth was a bit hard to keep up with at times and then throw in different POV's and during a lot of chapters it took a bit to remember which time/person it was based around. There was just so much information that really wasn't all that useful and it started to get a bit redundant.

All in all it was just ok but I see many readers have absolutely loved it and you may as well.

**Received ARC through NetGalley. Voluntarily reviewed**