A Missed Opportunity

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Park Row and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Beautiful Bad. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

Beautiful Bad is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, Maddie, who has suffered a head injury in a terrible accident and is trying to puzzle out what happened. As she is reflecting on her past, especially regarding the relationships between herself, her husband Ian, and her former best friend Joanna, readers are given an insider's view to Maddie's psyche. The problem is that the author takes too long to get to the heart of the story and then does not give enough background information to make the novel complete. Maddie and Ian's conjoined plot line is really just thrown together, as the progression of their relationship in its early days is put out there without much explanation. There are a few twists that are unexpected, but they did not make sense within the context of the novel. Beautiful Bad kind of reminded me of a Scooby Doo episode, where the story moves along until a quick ending wraps everything up neatly.

Beautiful Bad had a lot of potential, with a good foundation for a psychological thriller, but the author just did not take it far enough. Even unreliable narrators have to be likable and I could not form any kind of emotional connection to Maddie. It was a good, quick read, but ultimately Beautiful Bad was a missed opportunity by the author to give readers a thrilling novel.