Review: Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison
I am pretty torn about this book.
Good Girls Lie is a murder mystery surrounding an American boarding school called Goode; we open on the death of a girl named Ash and then go back in time to Ash arriving at Goode from England. Ash is recently orphaned in a set of events that are mired by scandal, so she is excited to have a new life far away from people who know her.
I did really like the setup of this book, all the moments of the story being set up, and the slow layering of mysteries in the beginning of the book. I was really interested while Ellison was opening all these questions; my mind was very engaged with the text. But as I read, and as I got more answers, I started questioning parts of the narrative that were not meant to be in question.
Ash's engagement with coding was a bit odd; I don't know a ton about it, but she worked in Java and on a mac, and those two things just don't mesh well with what I've been told by other computer-ish people. This was a very minor detail, and the narrative does just skate over these things, so it isn't a huge deal. The bigger things that bothered me were the technology rules around the school were bizarre. I just cannot believe that these kids and their parents would be okay with a complete no personal technology rule. And the fact that this extended to no tech-based security measure was bananas. These two factors just seemed like they were the case because the author wanted to set this story in the past but didn't fully commit. I think, in general, this story would have been better suited to being set in the past with very, very minimal changes.
Once we started getting answers to questions, I began to like the writing style less and less. Little things started distracting me. I didn't inherently dislike the plot and character reveals, a lot of the time, I liked them, but I just didn't always think they were done very well. Or at least they were done in a way that didn't always work for me, even when I liked what it was intellectually. Some of the secondary points of view did not feel like they were wrapped up, specifically the detective. I can imagine the end being a little bothersome to some folks, but I actually really liked the very end.
I think I will be giving this book three stars, but I am not entirely sure if that is accurate. I mostly just felt very odd about this book. I might read another book by this author to see if it is her writing style or this book.
I gave this book three stars.
