On the twentieth anniversary of a baby’s disappearance from a grocery store, a person is murdered at a local nursing home. The narrative follows four women whose lives intersect around these crimes: Edith, an elderly woman forced into care; Patience, a young employee at the home who hides her true identity; Clio, a daughter grappling with a fractured relationship with her mother; and Frankie, a librarian searching for her own missing child. Through alternating timelines and perspectives, the plot connects a historic kidnapping to a present-day killing, revealing how hidden family histories and long-held secrets link these strangers across generations.
Suspense readers who enjoy non-linear storytelling and complex character studies will find this a meticulous puzzle. It attracts those interested in the darker dynamics of motherhood, specifically the friction between daughters and mothers and the impact of domestic abandonment. The reader leaves with a detailed map of how shared trauma and deception can bind people together even when they are unaware of their connection. It provides a cynical look at how systemic failures in elder care and child protection can lead individuals to take justice into their own hands.
Insights from Good Bad Girl
“Sometimes the people we love the most are the ones we know the least.”
Frankie spends her life looking for a daughter who was stolen from a stroller. It makes you realize how grief can just freeze a person in time.
“Nursing homes are just schools for old people.”
Patience works in a care home but she is basically a con artist. It shows how easily we trust people just because they wear a uniform.
“Nobody tells you that being a mother is a life sentence.”
Edith is eighty and her own daughter is trying to lock her away in a facility. Growing old seems like a slow loss of every right you ever had.
“Secrets are like layers of an onion. They can make you cry.”
The way Clio treats her mother is hard to read. It reminded me that we often punish our parents for things they did decades ago.
- Published
- 2023
- Publisher
- Flatiron Books
- ISBN
- 9781250843968
- Language
- EN
