Heart pounding thriller that left me on the edge of my seat. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one. Definitely one of the best books this year.

I absolutely LOVED this book!! It was hard for me to put down.

This story is about two best friends, Becca and Nora, who have a toxic relationship but are always there for one another. Then one night, people in the town start mysteriously go missing, but they’re not all as innocent as they seem. I would liken this to a revenge story, with a woman righting the wrongs people have done in their lives. As the story goes on, we learn Nora is not as reliable a narrator as we’re initially set to believe, but we also start rooting for her and Becca.

The heart of this story is the imagery, with Albert’s writing making it feel like you could reach out and touch this world she built. I’m SO excited for this to hit shelves so everyone can enjoy this!!

In accordance with FTC guidelines, please note that this ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Fun, wicked, and as entertaining hell! I could not put this book it down!

A first for me by M. Albert but certainly not my last.

Thank you NetGalley and Flatiron Books for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Pub date: 2.20.2024.

Goddess, goddess, count to five
In the morning, who’s alive?

In the course of a single winter’s night, four people vanish without a trace across a small town.

The protagonist, Nora, has a believable teenage personality, and the way that she handles the struggles presented throughout the book makes a lot of sense. Her complicated relationship with her best friend Becca is well written and serves as a good foundation for the central conflict of the story.

I haven't read other books by Melissa Albert, but this book definitely will be changing that.

Happy Tuesday, friends 🖤

The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert
@MelissaAlbert
Pub date: February 20, 2024

“𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯 𝘛𝘝 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳. 𝘐𝘯 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺’𝘳𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘶𝘨𝘭𝘺.”

This is a story of friendship and sisterhood, a bond between girls and women, and the magical power and influence that bond can hold. But, of course, it’s so much more.

Nora and Becca have been best friends of the truest kind for years but over the last few months, they’ve been estranged. There’s a secret between them and there’s secret’s they keep from each other.

In the small town of Palmetto nothing exciting ever happens. That is until four people go missing in one night. One of the missing is Becca. As Nora delves into the disappearances, she finds a disturbing connection between the towns past that mimics hers with Becca. That of the Goddess Game, a local legend and game that is passed down, mother to daughter, sister to sister but how much power does the legend hold and does it have anything to do with the recent disappearances?

This is a hard one to fully review without giving too much away so I’m struggling a bit to put my feelings into words without spoiling anything! I’ll leave things here but I want to say that Melissa Albert is one of my favorite writers. Her skill in telling dark fairy tales that border reality is unparallel, in my opinion, and in The Bad Ones, she skims the line between fantasy and reality with finesse. I felt Nora’s anxiety, fear, confusion, her love for Becca and her horror at what is happening around her.

Sinister and eerie, insidious and chilling. This is the kind of story I live to read.

My thanks to @FlatIronBooks for this gifted copy!

💭Are you still friends or in contact with your childhood best friend?

Stay bookish, my friends 🖤

Creepy and unique but with a little discombobulation with the cast of characters. Not everyone seemed necessary and seemed to just be thrown in for confusion. All in all, enjoyed this read!

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert was a beautifully written, atmospheric fantasy horror that sucks the reader in and doesn’t let go.

As someone who normally doesn’t read this genre, I loved this book as an introduction. The author did an great job of creating complex and endearing characters with relationships that were layered and unexpected. The plot was sinister and twisty and just dark enough to turn my stomach into knots without leaving me with nightmares.

I gave this book four stars and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone, especially if they are new to the genre. The writing was lovely, the pacing exciting, and the characters tugged on my heartstrings. An overall excellent read.

I have loved every book by Melissa Albert I have read before and this book was just as captivating. The writing had me hooked from the very first chapter and the development of the bond between the two main characters was flawless. It gave you a bit of a thriller vibe mixed with a fairytale and had me at the edge of my seat until the end. There were plot twists I didn’t even see coming! If you are a Melissa Albert fan or simply a fan of page turners this is the book for you!

This book definitely had the vibes of the author - which, well, it should. It felt very similar to the Hazel Wood in some ways and it was mysterious and dark. I find that Albert's books often aren't straightforward and require a bit of thinking to understand the bigger plot of what is going on. I thought the elements reminded me of Slender Man, which I am not sure was intended!

Melissa Albert weaves an unique story in this supernatural horror that had me gripped from the very first page!

I’ve been a fan of Melissa’s ever since I read The Hazelwood years ago! She has a beautifully unique form of storytelling that transports you into her immerive worlds!

I was immersed from start to finish reading The Bad Ones, eating up ever single sentence and paragraph and soon finding that I had devoured it in a single sitting.

I highly recommend this one, especially for those who are in a spooky mood!

*A big thank you to Flatiron Books, NetGalley and Melissa Albert for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review! It is much appreciated!

The bad ones was way better than I thought it would be! I'm so glad I was able to read this book for an honest review. The authors writing style draws you in from the first page to the last

In one night, four seemingly unconnected people go missing. Nora's best friend, Becca, is one of them. The town worries that something bad has happened to them, but as she follow's the clues Becca has left her, Nora suspects her struggling best friend wasn't a victim of the disappearances...but rather the reason for them.

Thank you netgalley for this arc!

Wowza! This is so much darker than I anticipated, my dark little heart loved it. I can’t even really say much without spoiling but the aesthetic is everything, and that cover…..yes. Times 10

I don't think I've experienced such whiplash of highs and lows in one book in a long time. I'm in the vast minority in this, judging from the other reviews thus far, but I loved the first ~85% of the book and inhaled it down in the course of one day. But some of the more substantial twists just completely took the wind out of my sails, as it were, with the overall ideological implications behind them (in terms of anger, violence, vengeance, etc.). I won't say more so as to avoid spoilers, but wow, yes, this book turned out to not be for me at all.

The prologue of this book packs a punch! I was immediately captivated by Melissa Albert’s rich imagery and eerie suspense. However, I felt the pacing slowed almost to a stop during the initial chapters of this contemporary YA genre-bending horror/mystery.

Patience does pay off for readers who stick it out. The rich world-building, character development, and intricate plot take off in the later chapters. And once things started to ramp up, I could not put this down!

This YA horror mystery genuinely creeped me out and I was absolutely hooked.

The beginning scenes were quite scary and reminiscent of Stephen King.

The supernatural aspects of this book were unsettling. I didn't quite know what to expect going in but it was so compelling I devoured it in two days.

This is a unique story with a complex friendship at the core of it. I definitely recommend it both to fans of horror YA and those open to trying something new.

Five stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Bad Ones comes out on February 20th!

I found this book extremely confusing from the beginning of the book, As I progressed the story became even more confusing, So much so that I just could not read any more. I felt I had absolutely no idea of what was going on in the story. The shift from 1st to 3rd person also interrupted the flow of the story for me.

I am sure there are many readers who will enjoy this story. Unfortunately, I was not one of them.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC!

This one's for the weird girls!!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel like "love letter" as a phrase is tossed around a LOT when it comes to books/plots/what have you but this one really truly felt like a love letter to the very unique kind of friendship that's forged between two weird little girls. If you were a weird girl you KNOW what I mean. There's just something different about being a bizarre girl child and finding your just as weird twin flame. Those friendships are forever. They've seen the absolute dredges of your weirdness and they're still with you.

That's what this was. I liked it a lot--I feel like friendship (especially weird sort of toxic friendship) isn't written about as often as it should be, especially in YA. Friendships are at their most tumultuous when you're a teenager and it often leads to CRAZY weird behavior and toxicity that you might not even realize is bad until you're looking back on it because your brain isn't developed yet! (Hi, homoerotic codependent friendship!)

Melissa Albert did great with this one. It was truly eerie and so twisty--I never quite knew what was happening and felt just as lost as Nora was. The little smidge of romance was cute, but I was so appreciative that it was just background noise and I LOVED that Nora and James didn't just fall into it. I loved that she was so preoccupied and concerned with her best friend that she was like "I don't have TIME for this". The supporting cast was fun, too! I especially liked Ruth and Sloane.

Albert also has a crazy way with words. There were a few instances where I had to highlight or pause to make a physical note of a line or a phrase that she used and with any luck, I'll remember to come back and add them here upon release. I got winded a couple times by them!

Ultimately I liked this a lot and would definitely recommend it. Always and forever, we support women's wrongs. :)

I love a good supernatural / mystery / thriller book. A very niche area! I loved the premise and for a YA book there were plenty of moments that gave me the spooks. We follow Nora, the main character, as she attempts to uncover the mystery of her town and unexplained disappearances, and we toe the line of reality and that which is more sinister. You feel for Nora as she attempts to grasp what is and isn’t real and the supernatural presence that seems to linger behind every dark corner. Overall, interesting concept and I enjoyed it!

AHH! Melissa has done it again, hit it out of the park with this chilling contemporary story that dives deep into toxic friendships, the stories we tell ourselves and those passed down and how the truth evolves into tales so murky we cannot discern fact from fiction, friend from monster. I *almost* wish I'd played the Goddess game, it felt so real and like something a young me would obsess over but also be horrified by (much like my obsession with this book).