I didn't know a lot before going into A Better Bad Idea, and I think that's the best possible way to experience it.

This dark, slow burn thriller was perfectly bitter and rage filled. I can't emphasize enough how the pitch line, " End of the F****** World meets Sadie" captures this story perfectly. It's an addicting story of a small town, two hurt girls, and a fire that burns inside them.

I really adored the characters and plot of this one. Evelyn and Reid. All of the characters were wild messes in their own regard, and oh my goshhh. It added so much angst and darkness. I loved how this story was told through Evelyn and Reid and how their voices were so unique and corrupt. These characters aren't happy, likeable and friendly. They have screwed up morals, secrets, and perceive the world in a way I've never read about before.

The plot of this matched the characters... meaning it was dark, gripping, and a bit messed up too. It's an addicting thrill ride that immerses the reader and refuses to give them up.

So, to say the least, I really enjoyed this book. I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes characters with messed up morals, thrillers, and the dark.

I received an e-Arc of this title from the author in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own!

I liked this book. It’s about Evelyn who desperately wants to get out of her town but is staying for her little sister because of her mom’s abusive boyfriend. But one day, Evelyn and the city’s golden boy decide to run away on a non stop trip only to find out that their secrets can’t be left behind.

This was a well written book. I enjoyed the story plot line which wasn’t really original but still great to read. I loved the conflicts in the book that the character’s had to go through and the pacing was well done. I was hoping it to be more of a thriller but was kind of let down on that part because it was more contemporary romance then it was a thriller. This book is written in two povs which was great and it was from Evelyn and Reid’s POV.

With the characters, I enjoyed them but didn’t feel as much connected with them. Though I have to say that Evelyn is one of the strongest female characters I’ve read in a contemporary ya fiction book. For someone who has gone through so much can be hard and she lived for her sister. I loved the message this book was giving to the readers because I received that message. It might be different for some readers, depending on how they comprehend the story. There was some romance in this book to those who are romance lovers but it’s not the main factor of the story.

The ending was well done and needed. I think this was a great book overall but I guess I was expecting more from it. I still do recommend this book because it was great! Perfect for fans of Courtney Summers and Mindy McGinnis.

Book Review
Title: A Better Bad Idea
Author: Laurie Devore
Genre: YA/Thriller
Rating: ***
Review: I didn’t know anything about A Better Bad Idea before going into it and honestly that is the best way to experience this book as everything hits you out of nowhere. We follow three main characters, Evelyn Peters, Reid Brewer and Ashton Harper so this book does bounce back and forth between different POV’s a lot which I wasn’t a huge fan of but then I am not a huge fan of multiple POV’s in general. As many of the warnings imply with this book the main trio are an absolutely mess, not just one of them but all of them which was very refreshing to read.
The reading experience of A Better Bad Idea was mixed for me as I devoured the first half of the book in one sitting which isn’t something I commonly do unless I am really invested in the characters and/or story. In addition to the multiple perspective, we also jump back and forth in time as Evelyn’s POV is in the present and Reid’s is between 1 and 2 years in the past. I felt that Evelyn who is supposed the be the central character doesn’t actually get a lot of screen time as that goes to Reid which I understand in a sense but it took a lot of developmental time away from Evelyn and her motivations. At one point a massive motivation for Evelyn was her sister but we actually spend very little time discussing the sister as everything is focused on Ashton and Reid which made Evelyn feel very flat and one dimensional as a character. Despite the few issues I had with this book, I really enjoyed it. The novel opens with Evelyn and Ashton committing arson which didn’t make sense at the time but it does when you learn that the entire books is built around secrets and toxic relationships. For the first part of the book, we only follow Evelyn and this was just as well because she is lacking in the rest of the novel. In her part we get to really understand who Evelyn is as a person and what she wants, I am being vague because almost everything falls into spoiler territory with this book and I don’t want to give away the many twists and turns this book takes.
This book is almost completely character driven so if that isn’t your thing then this might not be the book for you. For me, the characters were the best part of the book despite some issues with development later on. I really loved seeing how the character’s thought processes, and the motivations behind some of their actions. A big part of this novel was Evelyn and Ashton discussing Reid who we learn on the first page of the book is dead and comparing themselves to her because she was a huge part of both of their lives in different ways. The plot was also interesting for me as we learn early on Reid is dead and we want to know why and how especially after we are introduced to her POV in the second act of the book. As we slowly gather the pieces of the puzzle and put them together, we can see how something in the past can continue to affect us in both negative and positive ways even years later. I also like seeing how Ashton and Evelyn reacted to the information that we the readers are also gathering which made the plot really engaging and definitely kept you hooked as you watched the characters evolve throughout the novel and not always for the better.
This book was also really intriguing not just the mystery/thriller aspect but Devore’s writing really added to this. Once the thriller aspects really come into play this book is almost impossible to put down but I did have some serious issues after the ¾ mark. I felt in the final act that there were a lot of the loose plot lines that weren’t handled correctly, they were either just left midway through or not resolved at the end, mainly to insert more dialogue between Ashton and Evelyn which did feel really repetitive at time. Honestly, Reid’s POV was my favourite as she was far more introspective than Ashton or Evelyn and it helped me focus more on her story. As you can probably tell I had a real love/hate relationship with this book. I felt it had some real potential but it didn’t quite live up to it and I honestly felt the knowledge that Reid was already dead should have been made into a reveal much like We Were Liars as that would have really added to the atmosphere and tensions as at times it doesn’t feel like there are any real stakes for the characters. Even days after finishing A Better Bad Idea I still don’t quite know how I feel about it and I will probably have to re-read it in the future just to figure out whether I fall in the love it or hate it camp. Overall, I did feel the experience was worth the effort I put into it but I wasn’t completely satisfied with it.

Thank you to NetGalley for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Okay, y'all this book was so good. We follow Evelyn who runs away with her sorta friend Ashton after they commit arson. This book deals with secrets and toxic relationships. For the first Act, we just follow Evelyn. The second Act is when we are introduced to Reid's perspective. Reid's perspective is always in the past, while Evelyn's goes between the past and the present.

Characters:
I'd say this is a character-driven book with a good plot. The characters and their lives were what was my favorite part of this book. I loved seeing how these characters think, what their thinking process is, and why they are doing some of these things. A big part of this book was Evelyn and Ashton talking about Reid, and comparing themselves to her. I do think Evelyn and Reid are alike at the same time as being completely different from one another. The characters had so many layers and I loved that. I loved how unique each character was.

Plot:
The plot was so interesting and seeing what these characters chose to do with each new piece of information. I loved how when something happened in the past we sometimes would see the characters in the present react to this information. I really loved the plot, it kept me engaged and I loved how the characters evolved throughout the plot.

Writing:
I really enjoyed Laurie Devore's writing! I'm not that picky when it comes to writing style and I really enjoyed Laurie's!

Intrigue:
Y'all, I read this is like 3 days. I read half the book in ONE day. I was so intrigued. If I started reading it I couldn't stop. I had to know what happened next. I had to know what these characters chose to do next. The intrigue in this book started from the very first page until the very end.

Enjoyment:
I freaking loved this book. There's no question about it. This book was phenomenal. It deals with so many hard topics (trigger warnings down below). I loved the characters (and hated them at some points) they were amazingly crafted.

In conclusion, you should read this book if you love: thrillers, secrets, amazing characters, multiple povs, multiple timelines.
I loved this book and I hope if you do pick it up you love it too!! If you're interested in it I highly recommend preordering it as it comes out on March 16th!!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

trigger warnings: arson, murder, abuse, toxic relationships, domestic violence, violence, mentions of sexual assault, and alcoholism

This one is messy - fascinating - a train wreck you can't bring yourself to look away from. Three bisexual (one confirmed, two implied) disasters whirling around each other in a chaotic, toxic orbit : Reid "I must control everything even if that means breaking it just to feel like it's mine" Brewer, Ashton "I feel too much and the only way to let it out is to drink and keep reaching" Harper, and Evelyn "I can only show people what they want to see otherwise they'll see right through to the rotten core of me" Peters. This trio was fascinating and absolutely wildly f*cked up.

I sat down and inhaled the first half of this book in one sitting. Jumping back and forth between Evelyn (present day) and Reid (1-2 years before), we painted a complex but, honestly, rather repetitive picture. Spending so much time with Reid took away from Evelyn's story and left less room for Evelyn's motivations. For example, a big factor for Evelyn is her half-sister but there's very little actual time spent discussing Evelyn's sister - it's all about Reid and Ashton instead. And it starts to really spiral at about 65-75% where I felt like I was just reading the same conversation over and over again.

There were a lot of loose threads in the middle that I feel weren't handled - in favor of the dialogue between Ashton and Evelyn. I liked that Reid was a bit more introspective; I think it really helped focus her story in a way that Evelyn's wasn't. But that may also be because we know how Reid's story ends right from page one.

Genuinely obsessed with Laurie’s writing. I found this book so hard to put down. I was drawn to the characters and this moving plot as well as the twists. Laurie has a way of bringing in such intensity into her writing and I genuinely love everything she’s written so far!

Laurie has a brilliant, brilliant mind. She created a thriller with multiple timelines with three completely complex characters. You are constantly trying to learn what is going to happen next! She kept our attention the entire time and we were racing through the pages, trying to figure out how everything pieced together, this story is definitely a dark mystery, that discusses the feeling of being stuck and trapped and doing WHATEVER IT TAKES TO FIGHT BACK.

You gotta grab this book! We had the opportunity to interview her on our podcast and she is INCREDIBLE. So excited to see her work out there and we are highly anticipating so many more in the future!

Author Laurie Davore's previous YA efforts - How to Break a Boy and Winner Take All - are known for their broken, often outright unlikeable protagonists. Her latest, A Better Bad Idea, is much the same, a story of a pair of angry, difficult girls in a small town that was never going to be able to contain either of them, let alone make them happy.

The story is simultaneously bleak and hopeful, centered on a pair of protagonists - Reid Brewer, who is dead, and Evelyn Peters, who is not -who embody opposite ends of what is essentially the same story. They are both girls with troubled pasts and uncertain futures, and this grim tale is equal parts cautionary and cathartic.

(Full review to come on Culturess.com)

4.5*

”The predictability of pain doesn’t make it go down easier.”

A Better Bad Idea kind of blew me away. It’s a slowish burn thriller for sure, but I love the journey our POV characters go on. We get a present POV from Evelyn. A girl who has been pigeonholed in a small town, and plays up that stereotype for her own safety. She wants to protect her innocent sister from the bullsh*t have and have nots games of McNair Falls, and also their mother’s abusive boyfriend. We also get a past POV from Reid, a girl who was doing her best to survive in McNair Falls, but sadly didn’t make it out alive.

I don’t want to ruin this story with spoilers, because I read it after reading the blurb and no reviews, and I felt like that gave me the ability to keep guessing where it would go. What I will say is that I enjoyed it. I think the author does a fabulous job telling an intriguing story about a dying town and the citizens within it who are dying literally and figuratively, while also exploring the way we see people the way we want to see them. It’s about people doing what they have to do to survive, even if that means manipulating and lying. It’s about how people you don’t even truly know can influence and change your life, without them even knowing they did. It’s about the fact that you can have everything in the world in someone else’s eyes, but still be empty or broken on the inside. It’s about reaching the end of your rope and lengths you will go to save yourself or someone else. I just loved that this book is empowering and thought provoking, while not taking anything away from the actual story.

The only reason I even took a .5 away from my rating is because one character’s story ending sort of bothered me, but I also see why the author possibly handled it that way and it is kind of a great comparison between two characters that I hope other people recognize. I just can’t not mention it, even vaguely. Oops sorry.

Anyway, I highly recommend this read. I think it’s entertaining and will also make you think. There are a few triggers, toxic relationships, abuse, domestic violence, violence, mentions of sexual assault, and alcoholism.

Pros
Strong Opening: Laurie Devore sets an unforgettably grim tone at the very beginning. This book opens with an obituary for a teenage girl. The obituary is followed by a commentary from Evelyn on just what it takes for a girl to survive in this world and then a brief flash into Reid's perspective in her final days. The groundwork is laid, and a brutal, dead-end reality is built in a few strokes of the pen.

Atmospheric South: In the way that Faulkner's South is evocative, Devore's South is atmospheric as well. Grotesque and terrible, Devore conjures scenes of a dying town caught up in its death throes. This book isn't full of the hanging Spanish moss and picturesque plantations of a Southern Gothic. It is a down-to-earth, grounded-in-gritty-reality sort of exposé.

Broken Characters: There isn't a good and good-hearted character in Devore's cast, perhaps aside from the six-year-old sister. The broken town of McNair Falls has produced a cast of fractured characters, and their broken hopes and dreams round them out very well. Their lives are fragmented. They themselves are scarred. Beaten, bruised, and desperate, the stakes are high for anyone who wants to, in Evelyn's words, simply survive.


Cons
Rocky Opening: Though the first pages with the obituary and following commentary lay down a strong foundation, the narrative switches after this. With few descriptions to ground the reader in the opening chapters, it is not entirely clear what is happening and why. Part of this obscurity is intentional, but it is definitely a difficult style to get used to.

Lacking Emotion: The lack of emotional resonance here may come down to the fact that the characters themselves are so numb to their pain and the world around them. Even so, I felt like there wasn't enough of an emotional string to tie the story together. While Devore's writing is evocative enough without it, I still felt like this book was missing some sort of final, compelling piece.

Short Paragraphs: This may seem like a petty critique, but it really did make a difference in my reading experience. The short, quick paragraphs made it difficult to sink into the story and become fully immersed. Sometimes short paragraphs work to keep the pace quick and sharp, but that wasn't the case here. The style ultimately stopped me from becoming engrossed, which is a shame.

Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
8/10

Anyone who enjoyed Charles Forsman's The End of the F***ing World or its television counterpart are likely to enjoy the desperately dead-end characters in this book. Those who rooted for the bloody revenge of Diana Urban's All Your Twisted Secrets will enjoy the can't-take-it-back plotline of this contemporary piece.

I really liked this book. It’s a great thriller/mystery with an engaging plot and amazing characters. I highly recommend it.

Laurie's books are always really intense, which incredibly imperfect characters who are super hard to like or root for sometimes, but they make you feel things, and they make you THINK. I've been waiting for her newest book for years, and it was well worth the wait! It got me out of a reading slump fast--it's emotional, it's dramatic, and it really pulls you in.

I enjoyed this book. I would give it a 3,5 star rating. The characters were likeable but not
lovable. They weren’t very well fleshed out in my opinion. They felt very shallow except for the main narrator who was being abused. We didn’t really find out why they were negative and whiny , which I was hoping to find out by the end. Overall the plot was promising, but did not live up to its full potential. I also don’t particularly like slow builds unless they end in a definitive conclusion. This is my honest opinion in exchange for the eARC. No funds were given for my opinion.

Hello,

Thank you so much for granting my arc request. I really appreciate your approval. I recently started this arc and I am struggling to connect with the writing. I wish this book much success but at this point I have decided to not finish this for now. I will not be reviewing what I have read. I look forward to working with you again in the future.

Kind regards,

Brittney

There’s nothing I can ever really say about Laurie’s books. They’re haunting and beautiful and messy and perfect and they are poetry. They are always the most beautiful chaos I can imagine, full of broken people who always somehow remind you a little bit of yourself, even if you’re not all that broken.

I can’t even properly express how amazing this book is, nor would I want to. It’s simply something you’d have to experience for yourself. But Evelyn and Reid are by far the worst characters in her stories, and I mean that in the absolute best way. They are messy and spiteful and sometimes really god damn awful, and yet you root for them with everything you have to be better, to get out. And when they do, it’s so damn satisfying, even if their ending is not always what you imagine it would be, or even a happy one.

Her writing, her stories, her characters, they all pull you in and burrow into you and they don’t let you go. And I love it. They may not be for everyone- it’s easy to hate people like the ones she writes about- but all of her books, including this one, are like nothing you’ve ever read before, I can promise you that.

This is a story about perception vs reality.

I really enjoyed this book and the experience of reading a story that juxtaposes memory and perception of someone, with the reality of who they were. I also loved the author’s voice and take no prisoners style of emotional warfare.

On an additional note, the work around intimate partner violence was done in a compassionate but clear way. You felt the characters love and hatred for her mother, and her desire for the justice denied to her by the lack of power and privilege she holds. Classism can be tricky to tackle in fiction, but I felt like it was deftly done here.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 💫

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for this eARC!

First, thanks to NetGalley for this e-ARC.

Laurie Devore writes YA books about broken people, which I know turns a lot of readers off. But, for me, it's understanding those broken people and working out their stories that keeps me reading.

I'd give this 3.5 stars. This one didn't win me over like Devore's earlier two works did. The characters were certainly dealing with Big Issues, and trying to figure out their lives, but I kept waiting for some kind of twist that never came. Maybe the explanation of <spoiler>Reid's death was supposed to be that twist</spoiler>, but that didn't surprise me in any kind twisty way.

I can't say I enjoyed the journey, but it was certainly an interesting read.

I LOVED this book! Laurie Devore is a YA author who deserves to be much better known. I hate the "unlikable characters" label, but she has a gift for consistently making her protagonists both understandable and sympathetic even when they're doing bad things--and she also makes those bad things so much fun to read about! Her books are the perfect combination of painfully real emotions and over-the-top soap opera, and she sensitively portrays issues of mental health, class, gender, and sexuality (with complicated, non-preachy bisexual representation in this one), all without losing the compelling plot. 5 stars.

I really enjoyed the prose of this book. Both narrators have a lot going on, and all the main characters are well-crafted. I both HATED and loved the characters equally, which is something difficult to do, but Devore made it seem easy.

The story is not only told from different perspectives, but from different times as well. It goes from before to after and back. It's a great way for the story to unfold from all aspects. This type of order is not always done the best, but I think that Laurie Devore did a great job with it, and it made me love it even more.

I binge-read it, and I don't binge read everything. It was a really great book that was really well-written with VERY well-crafted characters.

KIND OF SPOILER: The ending was bittersweet and I really love bittersweet endings. I'm actually a super sucker for them, so I had to give 5 stars.