For my first post under the blog's new name, mixed feelings: the TPL waiting list frustratingly never seems to move; a half dozen books are eluding my grasp—paper and electronic. I scavenge what I can find in the in-house library.
Laurie Elizabeth Flynn. The Girls Are All So Nice Here. Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2021.
I wouldn't actually choose a title like that, would I? It smacks of girly gossip and sarcasm. Perhaps a throwback to True Confessions magazine?
With a protagonist named Ambrosia. Gimme a break. It's not the first time I lament the lengths to which an author will go to make the main character stand out; yet for all I know, real people out there are doing the same thing with their children. "Amb" goes to college for theatre arts, disdains her straight-arrow, platitude-quoting roomie Flora, attaches herself to Sully, the wildest girl in the dorm, and yearns deep down for some tender, loving care. Constant partying and sex with every random male doesn't provide it, but the alliance with Sully ensures plenty of attention. Ten years later and married to Adrian, Amb gives guilty hints that she did something dreadful during college days. She doesn't want to go to the ten-year reunion; she doesn't want Adrian to go. But here they are. Both she and Sully received anonymous emails saying "we need to talk about what you did." Her worst fear is that someone will tell Adrian the awful thing. Despite the woman's unattractive, muddled character, I too want to know what she did.
Past conniving slowly comes to light. Amb and the sociopathic Sully had no compunctions over making fun of others and pulling outrageous pranks. But wait. Who was that delicious man Amb literally bumped into on campus back then? Was he ‒ Kevin ‒ "The One" for her? Give the author credit for complicating it. Sully more than helped engineer a scheme for Amb—making an unavailable man available. Amb began to question her friend's depth of toxicity when she ‒ golly ‒ realizes that they hurt people. One of them dies. At the reunion, she's paranoid when she spots the same policeman who interviewed the entire dorm at the time, convinced he still wants to prove her responsible for what happened. And who sent the emails that now appear threatening?
Amb's increasingly guilty anguish is realistically portrayed, filling page after page, but she fails to get beyond self-centred justifications for her actions or she blames others. The entire disregard for toxic consequences comes to a satisfying end just when you want to hurl the book through a window. True confession: I didn't put a great deal of effort into selecting quotes.
One-liners
▪ I wasn't used to being treated well because I didn't even know what it felt like to be noticed. (15)
▪ To me, being nice was as naive as being trustworthy, which had gotten me nowhere. (29)
▪ I didn't know who I was when I wasn't trying to be someone else. (38)
▪ I turned into a monster, but the world knows exactly how to make monsters out of girls who want what they can't have. (42)
▪ I didn't need a friend like Flora, whom I would always feel slightly inferior beside, who would impose a standard I would forever fall short of meeting. (73)
Multi-liners
▪ Her kamikaze attitude, the life it pulsed into everyone around her. You didn't know what she was going to do, or what you would do when you were with her. (44)
▪ "Thank god we decided to do this," Sully said. "Campus is so boring. I barely have a pulse anymore." (123)
▪ I let a rattling sigh escape my lips. "I saw them together, in our room." (138)
▪ "Flora's coming with us," I said. "Her boyfriend is being a dick." (152)
▪ "I guess we were both wasted." It's an excuse I've used before. (165)
▪ "Why are you pretending to like me? You stopped talking to me freshman year. And you called me pathetic trash." (186)
Samantha M. Bailey. Watch Out for Her. Ebook download from TPL. Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2022.
This did come from my waiting list (has the logjam broken?) so there must have been something in the publisher's blurb that appealed to me. But I have to say, domestic dramas are getting a bit tiresome. Here, we have not one, but two disturbing women who alternate with narrative. The story turns back and forth between "Now" and "Before" but would have been more aptly cast as "Toronto" and "Vancouver." Sarah and Daniel Goldman have just moved in a rush to Toronto with their son Jacob, feeling vulnerable (at least Sarah is) in a new, strange neighbourhood; Daniel is more comfortable climbing a social ladder along with his technology consulting career. Stay-at-home-mom Sarah is habitually overprotective with her energetic son, and for some reason, very suspicious of her new neighbour, Tara, whose son Cody immediately bonds with Jacob.
We get deep, dark hints about why they suddenly uprooted themselves. In Vancouver they had hired university freshman Holly Monroe as a summer nanny for Jacob; Sarah was freed to attend to her love of photography in and out of her own dark room—even though she comes across at times as a paranoid nervous wreck. Holly adored Jacob and Sarah, the latter like the loving mother she never had. After a flaming row with her own parents over a theft, she managed to move right into the Goldman house. How could all that go wrong? ... because Holly snooped. And their lives became a colossal clusterfuck of miscommunication, misinterpretation, and deceit. The deeper Holly and Daniel and Sarah dug themselves in Vancouver, the more something will explode in Toronto.
Compelling, for sure. My only quibble is the momentary but confusing time jump forward in the Vancouver section, but it's repeated later in fitting sequence. A winner, I declare. Not Bailey's first novel, an author to watch. My first pull-quote is recognizable national snark, n'est-ce pas?
Bits
▪ The wind is sharper in Toronto than North Vancouver, something else my son is now forced to get used to. (12)
Sarah
▪ I've made so many mistakes that I can never undo. (14)
▪ "Your mothering is smothering. You need a break." (35)
▪ Where other people seek adventure, I anticipate peril. (38)
▪ I haven't met Cody's father, and I don't want my boy in this woman's house. I don't know enough about her yet. I don't trust her. (95)
▪ She's a calculating snake who slithered into my family. (106)
▪ "You're a manipulator and a conniver, and I don't want you anywhere near us anymore." (215)
▪ Is that what she did, wending her way into people's hearts and families only to tear them apart? (240)
Holly
▪ Her father laughs like she told the funniest joke. "You're my ace in the hole." (79)
▪ Whatever happened between these two men, Daniel looks so stressed. (82)
▪ "You're a drama queen, Holly, and a klepto. Get out." (119)
▪ She has a place to stay, people who've let her in, who value her for who she is. (131)
▪ Holly can see her relaxing by the moment. It's working. She's back on track. (234)
▪ Daniel is a liar, a criminal, a man hell-bent on not getting caught. (266)
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