I have read several other books by Alice Fenney. This is my favorite so far. I loved all the quirky characters. The writing style was similar to Laine Moriarty's. I highly recommend this book.
I enjoyed the narrator for the audiobook.
I received this galley from NetGalley.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the ALC of Good Bad Girl.
A baby was stolen from a supermarket twenty years ago, and a woman dies in a elderly care home. As unrelated as these two activities seem, there are connections forged between them, along with many overlapping characters, as this story progresses. It is hard to say more than that without giving key pieces away.
This was a quick listen, although I had a little trouble distinguishing the characters and found myself rewinding more than I usually do, because I felt like I had missed something important. I had an issue with the reasoning why one character referred to herself as a “bad girl” - it is something that many people feel shame about and I think anything that perpetuates that shame is toxic for our society. I had trouble seeing past that to enjoy the book.

I had never read a book by Alice Feeney and I was really struck by how she weaves together a true mystery with some really poignant moments, especially between mothers and daughters. At the opening of the book, a baby is stolen from a stroller in a grocery store and is never found. We then jump ahead 20 years where a director of a retirement home has been murdered and one of its residents has gone missing. Somehow the two are connected and a local detective is determined to track down the three prime suspects to figure out exactly what transpired.

I really enjoyed the characters in this book. While they all certainly weren't lovable, they were believable. This is one of those books where you really cannot figure out who to believe. It jumps from one character to another and, while they may not all realize that they are interconnected, we can see that. We even think we know how they are connected and then Feeney shows us just how silly we are. The mystery aspect is fantastic and keeps the pages turning. The audio for this book is so well done. The narrator does a great job of keeping the characters and locations straight. I had a difficult time stopping this because I wanted to find out what happened to that baby and who committed murder at the retirement home. Behind all of this is a backdrop of good people potentially doing bad things for possibly good reasons.

If you like a good domestic suspense or even just a solid mystery I would recommend picking this one up. I will be looking to read more from Feeney in the future. 4.5 stars rounded up!

This was an excellently narrated, solid domestic fiction! I’ve had some issues with Alice Fenney’s previous two books and was on the fence about whether or not to just skip doing any future books. I’m glad I requested (and was granted) a copy of this audio. I liked that the book wasn’t chock full of gymnastic level twists that were implausible or ruined the entire vibe of the book. Instead, we are immersed in a cast of characters who seem to have no connection to each other at first but, as the story involves, we slowly come to see the full picture. I’m sure there will be people who expected unrealistic twists early and often. I, for one, felt it was so refreshing and definitely appreciated to listen to this book for the journey alone. And it was really fun and interesting journey at that!

*Thanks to MacMillan Audio and NetGalley for the audiobook review copy.

Good Bad Girl was a story where there were several characters seemingly unrelated going through various hardships and experiences. The best thing about this book was how Feeney was able to bring everyone together at the end for an “aha” moment. There were a few twists but for the most part I did see most of them coming. So this is why I chose three stars. I can’t say that most of the characters were very likable except maybe the dog.

The baby of an exhausted mother is taken from her pram in a busy supermarket. What happened to the missing child and her mother? Multiple perspectives peel back the layers agonizingly slowly all the way to the shocking conclusion. Fans of psychological suspense will enjoy this twisty mystery narrated to perfection by Katherine Press and Stephanie Racine.

The narrator for the book is fabulous but the plot was underwhelming. The murder mystery aspect was predictable & didn’t have me engaged at all. There was really only one twist I didn’t see coming throughout the whole story. I liked getting peaks of the characters past & the pace of how things were revealed but the overall plot line was weak. All things considered, it wasn’t a bad listen, it just had no significant impact on me.

A woman turns her back for a moment and realizes her baby has been stolen. Four women’s POV back and forth throughout the novel. Edith is elderly and living in a care home. Clio is Edith’s estranged daughter. Patience works at Edith’s care home. Frankie is a prison librarian whose daughter has left home. Care home residents are murdered and Edith fears for her life.

In comparison to Feeney’s other books, this one was a bit slow. More of a domestic thriller that deals with motherhood.

Thank you Flatiron books, Alice Feeney, and Net Galley for the ARC!

This book started super strong and lost me about half way through. Which is super disappointing because I love Alice’s work. A stolen baby 20 years ago. A murder in present day in a care home. Somehow related but how? I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

☕️𝑮𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝑩𝒂𝒅 𝑮𝒊𝒓𝒍 𝒃𝒚 𝑨𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝑭𝒆𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒚☕️

Pub day: Out now!! It came out yesterday🖤

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Well this was a wildly complicated book! I felt like I needed my own murder string board to keep up haha if you are fans of intricate plots and twists this one may be for you.

Full disclosure: I did this one on audio and there’s a chance I may have liked it better had I read the physical copy so I’d pop over to your local bookstore if this sounds up your alley or if you’re a Feeney fan!!!

Synopsis:

“Twenty years after a baby is stolen from a stroller, 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 messes 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.”

I liked it, but didn’t love it. Full disclosure though, I’ve never truly been an Alice Feeney fan (plz don’t come after me hahaha her endings always drive me mad) and the audio made it a bit hard to follow because of how convoluted this book was.

I am a huge Alice Feeney fan and this book was no different! She is the queen of thrillers and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough in this one. From beginning to end I was hooked. I kept trying to figure out what the connection was between our main characters and it wasn’t until close to the end that I guessed the twist. Overall I highly recommend this one!

I was so excited to get an arc of Good Bad Girl as I love books by Alice Fenney and this is another book that delivers!

It plays a lot with the theme of being “good” or “bad” and that bad people can do good things and good people can do bad things. I liked how she wove this into the storyline. I also enjoyed her exploration of mother daughter relationships throughout this book.

This one definitely kept me engaged the whole time with a few surprises at the end. Overall the twists were fairly predictable and a bit anticlimactic but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of this novel.

I also enjoyed the narrator as I listened to the audiobook.

If you have liked her other books, I think you will also enjoy this one!

Thank you netgalley for the arc!

I very much enjoyed this book. I have to say it’s the best thriller I’ve read this year. I was not expecting the final plot twist at all, I did not see Frankie being Cleo’s daughter. It was very clever and kept me wanting to hear more and more. I only have a few complaints :

1. The cover is horrible. Looks cheap. Should be better for a book this good
2. What is the infatuation with the police detective’s pink hair streak being mentioned every time she was speaking to someone? In 2023, a pink streak shouldn’t get this much coverage in a book.
3. This book relied so much on coincidence. I think the author obviously knew that and gave Edith a line about coincidence which I thought was clever.
4. The police just stopped investigating the murder?

Minus some the above plot holes, this thriller was amazing. I can overlook them. The narrator was outstanding. This book should be a hit with word of mouth.

Alice Feeney has done it again with a twisty, turny, page turner. The whole time I was reading this I felt on the verge of connecting all the dots but I wasn't able to figure out how eveyone was connected until the end. It was a wild ride of babies lost or given away at birth, murders in a senior care home, and a whole cast of characters with complicated relationships with their mothers. I enjoyed the narrators, Stephanie Racine who I've listened to and enjoyed before, and Katherine Press who is new for me. I recommend this book to lovers of British Thrillers.

𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 💭:
This is a gradual-paced domestic thriller centered around four main characters. I found it easy and straightforward to follow while reading the physical book 📖, but when I tried just the audio version, it got a little confusing for my 🧠 . I highly recommend using the audio alongside the physical copy, if you choose to do the audio! (Like many of you, I love audiobooks for time reasons but sometimes you just need the good ole physical 📖 to keep all the characters straight!)

Alice Feeney excels at crafting unexpected twists and turns. I was guessing the final revelation right until the book's very end 📖👏🏼.

The characters all have interconnected secrets, making it captivating to see the mystery unravel through each of the page's 🐞.

This 📖 is officially out in the world on Tuesday!! 🎉

On the surface, Good Bad Girl is a murder mystery. If you look a little bit deeper, you'll find it's the story of mothers and daughters, and not just regular every day mothers and daughters. These women have strained relationships, and they're all hiding secrets.

This book has A LOT of characters, and to be quite honest, I had a hard time keeping track of who's who for about half of the book. Once I was able to figure out who these people actually were, I enjoyed the story a lot more. That said, it did take me a long time to get into the story. I wonder if it might have been different if I had the book in front of me, but with the audio, I was confused more often than not. In the end, this is a good story with good characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ALC. Katherine Press and Stephanie Racine were great narrators (even if they sounded the same at times).

I haven’t previously been a fan of Alice Feeney books but this one wasn’t bad at all!
I really liked the multiple pov and how all of their stories are weirdly related. It was a good murder mystery that kept me guessing!

*4.5 Stars On My Instagram Account*

"It's not who we are, it's who we think we are that holds us back in life and stops us from being who we could be."

There are so many great quotes in the dynamic slow burn dramatically twisty Good Bad Girl by premier twisty thriller author Alice Feeney that choosing one for this multi layered domestic thriller was nearly impossible.

This story begins with a baby stolen out of its buggy in a grocery store. 20 years later a woman is murdered in a care facility. Somehow, with the warped winding mind of this writer, these events are extensively connected to each other.

80 year old Edith is tricked into an elderly facility by her daughter Clio. Edith is determined to escape with the help of her aide, Patience. I love Patience for finding the shelter where Clio placed Edith's faithful dog Dickens and rescuing him. She even sneaks him in to visit Edith. Patience has her own family drama, running away a year ago, estranged from her mom Frankie.

This story is about mother/daughter relationships. I believe one of the themes of this book is, "... there's nothing like a mother's love. Take that away you'll find there's nothing like a daughter's hate."

Once again, narrators Stephanie Racine and Katherine Press give award worthy emotional performances and still keep the humor and sarcasm with the author's sharp dialogue.

Everyone has so many secrets that Frankie has "shh!" tattooed on her to remind her to keep hers to herself. Then there's detective Charlotte Chapman who has connections to these women too!

Alice Feeny is one of my all time favorite thriller writers and has once again created a story of, "people who are good at being bad and people who are bad at being good."

I received a free copy of this audiobook from MacMillan Audio via #NetGalley for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

4.5⭐️ This is easily my most anticipated 2023 release, and as usual when it’s written by Alice Feeney, it did not let me down. She is the master of jaw-dropping twists and from start to finish, she intricately unveils them one by one.

While this is a more slow burn type of thriller, with a really unique cozy mystery vibe, there are still many of the elements that make Feeney so popular. Her characters are always well written, with incredible depth and relatability, and the relationships, whether between spouses, friends, or mothers and daughters, equally so.

Her prologue and cliffhanger chapters are also her trademark and it really kept the pace moving, even in the slower, more reflective moments. And with a beginning that starts at the end, I found myself flying through the pages trying to figure out how we got to where we started.

Feeney is an auto-buy author for me and there is a reason why - her writing is in a league of its own. Check out 𝘎𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘉𝘢𝘥 𝘎𝘪𝘳𝘭, and then proceed to read her entire backlist (which I’ve rated all 4-5★ minus one that I left unrated due to subject matter). She can do no wrong in my book.

ʀ ᴇ ᴀ ᴅ ɪ ғ ʏ ᴏ ᴜ ʟ ɪ ᴋ ᴇ :
🔪domestic suspense
👩‍👧mother/daughter dynamics
📏short chapters
🧦cozy type thriller
🌪️twisty books
👯‍♀️multiple POVs

Thank you {partners} Booksparks, Flatiron Books and Macmillan Audio for my gifted copies.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an audio copy to listen to in exchange for an honest review.

What did I just read?? I'm gobsmacked at how addictive this books was. I was working to figure out all the pieces and characters and mysteries and never did them all. Fantastic book!