And When She Was Good: A Novel - Laura Lippman

I received a free copy of this novel through the Arcycling blog

(Trying something a bit different with my reviews. Please let me know if I should change it back or keep it.)

This book should have been named “Daddy Issues” because that it basically all it’s about. Heloise/Helen has been a prostitute (escort) since she was nineteen years old. She dropped out of school (though she was pretty much a straight A student) and ran away from home with the first guy she slept with because she thought he loved her. She blames this on her father, because he was cruel to her and beat her and her mother. 

She eventually hooked up with a pimp, who also beat her occasionally, this she blames on her father. And her mother for putting up with her father. She blames her father for her not graduating high school. She blames her father for every bad thing that’s happened in her life. She takes no responsibility for the decisions she’s made that led her down the path of prostitution. 

I understand that children that are abused by their parents suffer mental consequences, but there comes a time when you need to take responsibility for your own actions. Heloise never learns this lesson, because her in twenty years of hooking, she never once gets caught (unlikely).

She’s also boring and very pretentious for someone that never graduated high school. She has a son, Scott who is constantly described as a “dream child”. He is perfect in almost every way and he has been since birth. He hardly ever cried, slept through the night, few tantrums, polite, smart, and athletic. 

There are no real twists or turns in the book, you can see the “twist” from a mile away. Also the book is very dry and it took me a few days to get through it. It flips back and forth from her current life to her past, leading up to how she became to be a suburban madam. 

This book just wasn’t for me.