New Review! Goodbye, Good Girl by Renee Blossom 3 Cranky Stars

Goodbye, Good Girl by Renee Blossom
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3 Cranky Stars


This book has the premise to be really interesting - coming of age, oldest daughter is taking care of mother who is addicted to pain medication following a car accident and pretty much raising two younger sisters while Dad is pretty much MIA. Kandace is pretty sure that her dad is not a traveling chef, but what exactly is it that he does do? When a bad guy shows up at their house looking for him, she decides she has to find him to warn him. Then there is the hacker friend, the boyfriend who takes her halfway across the country on a whim but leaves her when his mom calls him home, and the stripper with a heart of gold.


I wanted to like this one, but I just couldn't ever decide exactly what the story was supposed to be. Though there is never anything explicit, the situations are definitely not YA material. The thriller aspects fell flat to me, and I still don't know what exactly the answers to anything were. But my biggest issues are the completely unrealistic aspects of just about every piece of the story. The details do not add up anywhere.


The glamorization of the strip club world was completely over the top. The dollar amounts mentioned constantly were very unrealistic, the song titles that are almost instantly dated, the perks, the instant star status all left a bad taste behind. It seemed like a naive teenager's view, and that is scary to me as a mother of teens. That viewpoint flows into all aspects of this story. The childhood best friend who is a major computer hacker. The new bff who spots her at a bus spot in a bad neighborhood and instantly thinks she will be an incredible stripper. The boyfriend that we aren't even sure is a boyfriend dropping everything in the middle of the first semester of college to drive her across country at the drop of a hat, then getting cold feet and leaving her when his mom tells him to - okay, that one may be one of the more reasonable scenarios.


I did actually like the stripper who befriended our heroine more than any other character in the book, but her feet also aren't terra firma much more than any other character.

I think there is potential here, but it needs a considerable overhaul.

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