Review: A Good Idea by Cristina Moracho
Author: Cristina Moracho
Edition: audiobook
Publisher: Viking Children’s Books (February 28, 2017)
Genre: New Adult, Thriller
Synopsis
Fin and Betty’s close friendship survived Fin’s ninth-grade move from their coastal Maine town to Manhattan. Calls, letters, and summer visits continued to bind them together, and in the fall of their senior year, they both applied to NYU, planning to reunite for good as roommates.
Then Betty disappears. Her ex-boyfriend Calder admits to drowning her, but his confession is thrown out, and soon the entire town believes he was coerced and Betty has simply run away. Fin knows the truth, and she returns to Williston for one final summer, determined to get justice for her friend, even if it means putting her loved ones—and herself—at risk.
But Williston is a town full of secrets, where a delicate framework holds everything together, and Fin is not the only one with an agenda. How much is she willing to damage to get her revenge and learn the truth about Betty’s disappearance, which is more complicated than she ever imagined—and infinitely more devastating?
My review of A Good Idea
Trigger Warnings: murder, mentions of conversion therapy, drug and alcohol use, suicide and suicidal ideation, racism
A Foreword
This is a strange review to write. Because when I finished reading A Good Idea, I thought “that was decently enjoyable”. I didn’t love it and had some issues with it but thought it was okay. Now, a week later, I have a different opinion. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a book that can be enjoyable (after all, I did enjoy it to a certain extent) but I think it has troubling issues that need exploring. Because no matter how okay or even fun at times I found it, I don’t think I really can recommend it to anyone. Definitely not without talking about some of the issues I have with it. So let’s get into the god, the bad and the honestly just plain weird parts in this review of A Good Idea.
An Edgy Whydunit
The central question in A Good Idea isn’t “who killed Betty?”, it’s “why did he do it?”. From the start, narrator Fin is convinced that Calder, Betty’s ex-boyfriend, killed her. After all, he confessed. While the story does throw in some moments of doubt, Fin remains certain that Calder did it. This means, the question isn’t who did it but why.
This becomes the central mystery of the story. It is compounded by the fact that Fin wasn’t there when Betty went missing. She moved away and is the only one of our central characters who has more of an outside perspective. Fin has the double motive of wanting to find out what exactly happened that summer.
Overall, I think Cristina Moracho does a decent job of plotting this mystery. Honestly, some of the twists are a little out there but oh well. However, this book felt incredibly slow and at times mind-numbingly repetitive. Yes, we get it: Fin is edgy and hates this town. Ultimately I found the ending to be disappointing. It wasn’t a satisfying exploration of the why of the story and missed out on a lot of potential.
Angry Girl Makes Bad Choices
That’s pretty much the crux of Fin as a character. She feels distant from her childhood hometown and is grieving the mysterious loss of her best friend. Her coping mechanisms include drugs, trying to figure out what happened to Betty by wreaking havoc on the town and sleeping with her friend with benefits. She’s a charmer.
In the beginning, I really liked Fin. It’s no secret that I love a messy girl and Fin definitely qualifies. But at some point, I got really tired of her shit. I didn’t feel like she had any substantial character growth. And as a character-loving reader, that’s super disappointing! Unfortunately, I think Christina Moracho tried just a little too hard to make this book and its characters edgy.
Not for Teens
The amount of casual drug use and sex screamed “look at me, I’m such a cool and edgy teen book!” It also makes this more of a New Adult book than a Young Adult one as it was marketed. It’s definitely not a book for younger teens! I know that New Adult as an age category has sort of vanished but for this book, it would’ve been more accurate. Almost all the characters are college-aged and some are even older. In general, I could’ve done without this try-hard edginess because it added nothing. The dark and small-town atmosphere could’ve been achieved with much less and would’ve been more effective, in my humble opinion.
Just Some Casual Weird Racism for No Reason
This is the part of my experience with this book that took me a few days to truly digest. A Good Idea features a white character who pretends (and possibly believes) that he is Native American. He’s a drug dealer, decked out with various Indigenous-coded items that, within the narrative, are definitely meant to give him a creepy vibe. And while the book vaguely acknowledges his behaviour as inappropriate, it’s never called what it is: incredibly racist!
While parts of his racism are relevant to the plot of the book, I’m wondering why the author included this character in this way at all. He simply could’ve been a white drug dealer with some delusions about the universe and justice. There was absolutely no need to reproduce racist and harmful stereotypes about Indigenous people.
The character made me deeply uncomfortable while reading and the more I think about it the worse it gets. There is no good reason for this casual racism to exist in this book and no matter what I might’ve liked about the book otherwise, I find this unacceptable. When I talked about the book on social media after reading it, I called it “a fun read”. And parts of it were fun! But I can’t simply ignore the racism in this book and honestly, I wish I had waited to digest my thoughts before talking about the book at all. I apologize for speaking about this book without acknowledging the racism and potentially making anyone think it was a good book to read. Ultimately, I prioritised my own comfort as a white reader over the harmful stereotypes and that made me complicit in their reproduction.
Inspired by a True Crime Case?
Something I found out while looking at other reviews was that this book bears a striking resemblance to a real murder case in 1961. A girl named Betty was found dead in a pond. There are other similarities, right down to the murderer, the motivation and even a letter that’s important in A Good Idea. I won’t get into them because that would be spoilers for the book, but you can read an article about the case here!
So it’s fair to assume that this case inspired Cristina Moracho. However, nowhere in the book is this acknowledged. That just rubs me the wrong way! Using the death of a real girl to write a thriller without once mentioning her existence feels incredibly icky and exploitative.
This, combined with the racism, just makes me wonder if the author even cared if what she wrote was harmful. Those aspects are, to me, two very different indications of her indifference and disinterest in any kind of empathy for the people she uses to tell this story.
Like, maybe don’t exploit a dead girl’s story without acknowledging it (or even getting permission from relatives?). And don’t include weird racist Native American stereotypes to make a character seem dangerous. Just fucking don’t.
Overall…
A Good Idea is a YA thriller that seemed to have potential but that just falls apart the more I think about it. If I had known any of this before reading, I definitely wouldn’t have picked this up.
A post you might also enjoy: My Review of Dead End Girls
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