Books Bad Boy Good Girl

[Kayla Munl]

Thecharacters could have been a lot more complex. They had very basic characteristics that usually relate to characters within this genre. While reading, I realized that the characters lacked development.

The novel was not at all terrible, but it could have definitely been better. If I were to make suggestions on how to make it better, I would have told Kennedy that she was straying way too far into the cliche part of the young adult romance genre.

The story is great for someone who is big into the general YA romance genre. It is also a great book for someone who is into highschool/college books or the good-girl-meets-bad-boy trope. For someone looking for a new story or new ideas, this book might not be for you.

In 2020, right after the world shut down, I had to write an email to cancel my wedding. COVID had made the event impossible but that was just a convenient cover. A few days prior, I had found out that my then fianc was messing around with an untold number of people. I found messages where he and a woman invited to our wedding were planning on hooking up during lockdown and the night before our ceremony. It was the final straw. I had been good, damn it. I asked him to delete her email from the wedding list before I sent out the cancellation announcement. It felt like a simple request, a small concession to help me feel a whisper of respect. He said I was being mean. I got in the shower with my clothes on and sat until the water ran cold.

Someone said I was vindictive in an email last week. I laughed as I read it. Imagine taking tens of thousands of dollars from a shared account, and then calling the other person names when they point out what you did was both against the law and shitty as hell. But logic doesn\u2019t apply here. I had earned that person\u2019s ire and betrayal, down to the penny, through my failure to be a dutiful, empathic caretaker of their needs. And then I had the audacity to expect repayment. Who the fuck did I think I was? An old version of me would have been hurt by this characterization\u2014 but she\u2019s not around anymore. So what if I am vindictive? There has to be a point where you are allowed to seek revenge, to be angry, and not fucking apologize for it. How sweet do you have to be to someone who likes to kick you in the face, and then complains that you scuffed their boot? It\u2019s hard out here for a good girl.

I grew up as a pleasure to have in class. A little chatty, sure, but my homework was always done, and I got along well with my schoolmates. I loved the approval. I knew how to be good; I was always smiling, laughing, and ready to lend a hand. In her 2023 book On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and The Price Women Pay to Be Good, writes: \u201CThe need to prove our goodness as the price for protection and upward mobility has been coded into how we behave; it\u2019s hard to recognize because we are inside the structure itself.\u201D By high school I had it down. I was voted Best All-Around my senior year, I was on homecoming court, I had a job, and always made the honor roll. I was good. At home I was shitting blood so often that I had a colonoscopy at 16 to make sure I didn't have polyps or something else equally horrifying. I didn\u2019t, so the doctors just threw their hands up. In 2001 we didn\u2019t blame things on stress; we barely acknowledged it.

Like many good girls, all my jobs were in some version of customer service. I was your smiling hostess, waitress, sales clerk, and grocery store cashier. I honed my breezy small talk with each interaction. I swallowed all the negative comments, the terrible remarks launched at me and my coworkers because customers knew we couldn\u2019t say anything back. I knew it was part of the job. My friend Nick didn\u2019t have the stomach for it, and routinely got written up for customer complaints and pointing out unfair treatment. He was never wrong, but he wasn\u2019t suited for the work. He\u2019d ask me all the time \u201CHow can you be so fake?\u201D and I\u2019d just roll my eyes. I wasn\u2019t being fake; this was the job. It was simple\u2014 just be good above all else\u2014 but he could never do it. I was jealous. My stomach hurt so badly during those years that I thought I was dying. I\u2019d lay on the bathroom floor all night. I didn\u2019t have the money to go to a doctor, so I drank mint tea and took a lot of baths. I pretended that it helped.

My good girl persona helped a lot when I eventually did interviews and public speaking events to support my job writing cookbooks. I could turn it on and keep it on for as long as needed. What\u2019s a contentious 30-minute interview compared with 8 \u00BD hours of cashiering at one of Los Angeles\u2019s busiest groceries stores? Nothing. It\u2019s nothing. Cooking was the same. Of course I was a good cook, I had made it my life\u2019s work to be as good as possible at everything. I treated life like a recipe: if I put good ingredients in, in the right order, then I was certain something amazing would appear. I just had to keep moving forward. There were plenty of signs that I should change course but I ignored them. I had a full body rash that I would scratch so hard I broke blood vessels all over my legs, but I figured that it was from my detergent or body wash or some new lotion allergy. It was just a coincidence that it cleared up when the press cycle died down a few months later. But I was still smiling, still laughing, so everything was fine. I was good.

In 2020, right after the world shut down, I had to write an email to cancel my wedding. COVID had made the event impossible but that was just a convenient cover. A few days prior, I had found out that my then fianc\u00E9 was messing around with an untold number of people. I found messages where he and a woman invited to our wedding were planning on hooking up during lockdown and the night before our ceremony. It was the final straw. I had been good, damn it. I asked him to delete her email from the wedding list before I sent out the cancellation announcement. It felt like a simple request, a small concession to help me feel a whisper of respect. He said I was being mean. I got in the shower with my clothes on and sat until the water ran cold.

I\u2019m almost 40 now. I don\u2019t want to be a good girl anymore. It\u2019s unsustainable. You don\u2019t accrue points for good behavior, you only get them docked when you stop being a doormat. I thought that if I was perfect, it would protect me. If I was honest, followed the agreed upon rules, and tried my fucking hardest, then the people around me would do the same. But life doesn\u2019t work like that; it\u2019s just what they tell you so that you keep your mouth shut and smile. There is no recipe for a good, safe life. You can follow someone\u2019s instructions to the letter and still fail. Recipes only work in the kitchen. That\u2019s where all my good girl baggage goes these days\u2014 my little stories of controlling ingredients for a predictable outcome. The rest is in the trash.

wrote about her love of contradictions a few weeks ago and said what I needed to hear: \u201CNo one rises above. There is no high road, and if there were a high road, which there isn\u2019t\u2014not honestly, not if you look at what it means to have emotions\u2014if there were a high road, it would be as boring as Dante\u2019s Paradiso.\u201D Paradise and perfection are boring; being good despite the circumstances is boring and dishonest. I want to be a full person with all the wrinkles of a life well-lived. It\u2019s a much more achievable goal. These socially prescribed rubrics of how we should each act to be deemed good are hurting all us. We are limiting the definition of what it means to be human. That\u2019s not what this moment calls for- we need to grow. And if speaking my mind, demanding money I earned back, and deleting a mistress from an email list is mean, then fuck yeah I\u2019m mean. Who wouldn\u2019t be? I\u2019m not performing my goodness anymore. If you want a prize for following the rules, cook yourself dinner. If you want to be a real person with your full, imperfect humanity, then pull up a chair. I\u2019m only vindictive if you\u2019ve earned it.

I also liked how fast-paced the book is. It has a good balance between Pip solving the case, while also being a relatable teenage girl who goes to school and hangs out with her friends. A girl who teases her little brother and gossips with her friends. I love how we get to see those qualities shift as she solves the case. We see the aftermath, and how the case affected Pip and the people around her. It gave a beautiful conclusion to the book.

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This is a bold and immensely fascinating sequel which delivers increasing layers of suspense with some unexpected results at the end. In spite of the fact that it does not quite live up to the brilliance of its predecessor, it still retains several of the standout qualities such as a gripping, intricately woven plot, intelligent literary devices, and surprising twists.

Just a matter of weeks after unravelling the seemingly closed case of the murder of schoolgirl Andie Bell in the small town of Little Kilton, Pippa Fitz-Amobi has turned what had been her extended project into a hugely successful podcast series. At the same time, she insists that her crime-solving days are now over after the considerable toll that investigation has taken on her and her loved ones.

With the help of her newfound notoriety and the many missing posters she and her friends put up across the town, Pippa hears of numerous sightings of Jamie on the night in question which allow her to draw up a picture of his last known movements. As it turns out, the only thing that could stop her getting to the truth is her growing fury at seeing others cast doubt upon her morals.

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