I Love Lucy

🧡 Secretary meets Fleabag? Yep, sure. On the face of it, this has the wit, the erotica of both. But to me, this was a coming of age comedy; a portrait of a sweet, naive 20-something navigating the utterly cringy awkwardness of being. The two aforementioned works lean towards drama. Good Girl is much lighter.

💚Main character Lucy is endearing and infuriating in equal measure. I enjoyed being in her head. She doesn’t know what she wants to do or what she wants to be, except maybe Maggie Gyllenhall in Secretary. And who doesn’t want to be Maggie Gyllenhall in anything?

💜 In terms of the sexual content, it’s not so much erotic as a tongue-in-cheek Emily Post guide to S&M, examining the etiquette and varieties and pitfalls.

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SOUNDBITE

🎧 At nearly 9 hours, this was a respectable length for a humour audiobook, making it great value for anyone searching for a story in this underserved genre. And it was such effortless listening, I devoured it in a day.

🎧 Mich Anger delivers a thoroughly likeable, rounded performance, doing justice to all the characters and providing the vocal change cues so vital to a listener. She plays Lucy as very young, which I found interesting and very much a choice to emphasise her naivety. This would have been a very different experience had it been read, for example, with the sardonic purr of Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Big thanks to NetGalley and Bespeak Audio Editions for providing me with an ALC in return for an honest review.

I am unsure how I feel about Good Girl by Anna Fitzpatrick - I had a really hard time finishing it, but did because I had hoped it would all come together in the end (but it didn't, I felt the ending rushed and unsatisfying). I enjoyed that it was set in Toronto, ON and that the author seemed to shine light on many important topics.. but it felt like too much for one book because these topics weren't really expanded on. Was it erotic? sure, but nothing with wow factor (and that's saying something, I have been reading a lot of smut lately!).. I also found it more cringey than funny, but that could've been the narration delivery.

The narration was just okay, perhaps I would've enjoyed reading it in text more than audio.. but it still would've been shallow.

Thank you to Bespeak Audio Editions for this ALC

I didn't love this book but something compelled me to finish it because I thought it would have a good ending but I was wrong. The plot was a mess (too much into the "feminist angle" and BDSM) and overall I didn't enjoy it at all. I found the main character unlikable and there were a lot of unresolved areas that seemed to have potential but fizzled out. Overall, it was disappointing.

Many thanks to Bespeak Audio Editions and Anna Fitzpatrick for the advanced audio copy of Good Girl via NetGalley, in return for my honest and unbiased review. Quick note: I don’t recap plots in my reviews, as it’s easy enough to read the book’s synopsis and blurbs, I purely focus on my feelings & opinions of how the books makes me feel.

Well…that was…interesting.

Good Girl seems to me to be a bit of an amalgamation of ideas from the author. It sounded to me like Fitzpatrick had a brain full of ideas and wanted to squeeze them all into a book together. And whilst she may believe they all adhered to one narrative arc; I really didn’t follow it.

It all just kind of came out like a word salad of ideas and kink. The kink did not really relate to the rest of the ideas in the book. It COULD have. Maybe. But, at the end of the day, the way it was written meant that it just didn’t quite tie in. So that just felt random. The change of direction regarding the magazine comes quite near the end of the book, so that just kind of ends that line of narrative quite abruptly. And the last quarter of the book is just a bit of a tailing off. The humour promised in the blurb wasn’t particularly hilarious, and I didn’t see any similarities to Secretary or Fleabag.

The narrator was fine. She was not particularly great at voices other that two characters and the best friend’s ‘voice’ was just downright annoying. The editing was well done and high quality.

Moods: challenging, dark, funny
Pace: medium
Character development: weak
Plot or character driven: plot
Diversity: low
Spice: 5/5
Trigger warnings: Abortion, Abusive relationship, Drugs, Misogyny, Paedophilia, Sexism, Sexual abuse, Slut shaming

Rating
Story: 3/5
Audio: 4/5

Good Girl by Anna Fitzpatrick is really good!! I listened to the audiobook narrated by Mich Anger and she did an excellent job! I loved the 2015 Toronto setting! I also loved all the references such as TNA and MAC lip glass. For fans of the movie Secretary this novel follows Lucy, a wannabe writer, who works in a bookstore and enjoys being submissive in her romantic relationships. I liked how this book focused on many aspects of Lucy’s life from her love life, her sex life, her friendships and her work. This is a great debut! And so cool it’s the second book published by Flying Books in Toronto!

2.25 ⭐️ (rounded down)

TW: this book contains explicit descriptions of sexual content and cursing, along with more moderate mentions of sexual harassment, assault, pedophilia, sexism, misogyny and many others.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bespeak Audio Editions for accepting me as a prepublication reviewer for the audiobook of Good Girl. I do feel obliged to highlight the book’s good points but they do want an honest review and this is my authentic take.

The ‘plot’ follows Lucy who is a mid-twenties chaotic mess of a person. She’s working at a bookstore but really wants to pursue writing. She has sexual desires for a man to beat her and just very into kinky BDSM stuff in that department. She finds out about a 70s teen music magazine and this ignites a passion for writing again where she delves further into this media world of the time - specifically the experiences of woman. There is more to this but I don’t really care to explain it.

There are some interesting and important discussions on many topics: feminism, consent, BDSM/rough sex, women in media, female objectification of men, the reality of porn, friendships, among others. These are okay but nothing is fully explored or expanded on, I didn’t really learn anything new or that insightful. Lucy touches on her relationship with her mum and childhood in some ways but again not deep enough to understand why she has a preference for rough sexual acts like being beaten, tied, verbally abused, controlled, etc - like why? She never really thought about this. It sort of gives the impression that such a relationship is one people can go into lightly which I don’t think is a very position outlook. I did like how Lucy does have this interest and explores different types in a way and teeters on the role of consent. I guess it’s a voice I have yet to come across in books that I have read, so explicitly sharing her sexual fantasies, specifically ones we may have thoughts/desires about but rarely explore ourselves. I just needed more reasoning. Lucy’s research and interest into the media world of the 70s via her interviews with members of the SMASH magazine throw up important discussions on the role of women and the toxicity surrounding it but then it doesn’t really go anywhere. This is a running theme with many of the different plot lines is this book: they all are left rather unfinished, I would be more annoyed at this if I had been interested in them but really I wasn’t. But still it irked me.

The characters were all kinda insufferable. I found them all quite annoying, unrealistic, shallow, un-relatable and just very ‘meh’. Lucy did so so many things that just pi**ed me off like I wanted to shake her, she didn’t follow though with things and I dunno I could not care for her. Nora was very unrealistic in my opinion, the way she speaks, her attitude and just everything was so forced. Sasha is Yhh alright, she’s a decent friend and I agree with her morals in part but I would say she was kinda jarring and hypocritical. Lucy’s mum was alright I guess, she showed her daughter love albeit in some embarrassing ways - but like I did feel Lucy should have been more appreciative… I dunno. Danny was Yhh fineish but his character super super underdeveloped. The other men were all so crap: Malcolm, Henry, Sasha’s bf (forgot and don’t care about his name), the man she went to LA to speak to (forgot his name too) and just like they were all annoying, shallow and ehh. Nigel the dog was the only good character for obvious reasons: she was just a dog.

The writing was alright. I didn’t find it particularly great or intriguing. I did laugh at a few things but for the most part, the humour or ‘wittiness’ was rather forced and just not for me. The dialogue did flow but wasn’t realistic. There were many many times I felt super cringed with what was being said or happening and a plethora of ‘eye roll’ moments. If a certain thing happened near the end I would literally have thrown my phone at a wall. So yes I am extremely happy with that decision, mostly for my phone and not an appreciation for the story. It was that or physically throwing up at how cringy that would’ve been. That’s all I say on the matter.

The audiobook version of "Good Girl" by Anna Fitzpatrick Is well-read by the narrator. I find the story itself not as engaging unfortunately. I suspect that this is because the main character is 25 and has both limited life experiences and many lessons still to learn, which is all too obvious when considering the book as a whole. This book seems geared toward a younger audience and I think a reader in the 18-34 demographic might find the book more relatable.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

they say not to meet your heroes, but i instead invite them to my store so i can meet & hang out with them 🤷🏻‍♀️

i had the pleasure of meeting anna fitzpatrick, the author of “good girl”, a book i loved & cant stop talking about to anyone & everyone who asks. it’s a toronto story, about a girl at a crossroads, and i related to lucy so much: her crippling anxiety at always trying to be “good”, to be the best she can at everything she does, and the toll it takes on her.

please do me a favour and read this book, ok bye.

Funny, sure - but not that funny.

Most of the time, I actually found the main character, Lucy, rather sad and almost pathetic...
She has no sense of a given situation, and she hungers for love so much that the word "desperate" doesn't even come close to describing her.

But the story does bring out some interesting points about when to say stop, and how much one should accept before walking away from the situation.

Nothing bad to say about the audiobook - excellent narration!