Such a Good Girl by Amanda K. Morgan

 

So funny story, when I picked this book up I thought this was a discreet cover for a Daddy kink erotic romance novel. Then I started reading it and was very worried and confused when I saw that it was set in a high school. Then I looked at the publisher and saw that it was Simon Pulse and I was like, Oh. 

And then I read the book and I was like, You know when you think you're picking up a perfectly ordinary YA novel and it ends up devolving into blood pacts and rendezvous with a teacher?

Yeah, ME NEITHER.

This book was insane.

I can kind of understand why it has the low ratings that it does, but I don't think it's deserved. Without going into spoilers, SUCH A GOOD GIRL is the story about an all-achieving cheerleader who comes from an emotionally distant family that's way more interested in her fuck-up brother and his pregnant girlfriend than they are in the fact that she just got accepted to Princeton. Obviously, that is not received very well.

Riley, said all-achieving cheerleader, begins flirting with and later, starting a relationship with, her married French teacher, Alex Belrose. Alex is an old friend of her fuck-up brother but then he got his life together to teach high school kids. And, apparently, try to fuck them. Ew. Things quickly get very toxic, very quickly, and if you think you know how this book is going to go down-- you don't.

I predicted one of the twists but that's only because it was foreshadowed really well, and it went in several directions I wasn't expecting at all. SUCH A GOOD GIRL isn't a cautionary tale so much as it is a psychotic road trip of people behaving like evil lunatics. I think the author did a very good job writing a compelling psychological drama. Is it realistic? No, but I don't think it's supposed to be. I think this book deserves a much better rating than it has, but maybe it needs a title that won't confused used bookshop employees and compel them to file it with the adult books.

3.5 to 4 out of 5 stars