I gave this book the old college try, but I could not finish it. This was a slow burn that I was not expecting due to other reviews and the description of the book. I wanted to love this, but in the end I felt duped.

This was a book I really struggled with - every character (except Gwen) is truly awful and I just was not invested in the story at all and then the ending had way too much happen all at once.

Also, side note - the title and cover of this book do not really match up to this story at all.

This was an OK read, but I had a really hard time staying interested. It moved a little to slow for me to keep my interest.

I received an advance copy. All thoughts are my own.

Was not as fast-moving as I thought it would be from the description and although the story itself was good, it just didn't move quick enough to keep me engaged.

This one was dark. I’m not really sure that I liked it that much. I found it to be slow and boring at parts.

Claire thought she’d left the ugliness behind.

Fresh from delivering an address at a prestigious academic conference, she’s ready to enjoy the spoils of her evening – and then she sees Gwen.

Austin author Amy Gentry spins an irresistibly dark tale of academia’s toxic underbelly through these two women, once best friends and now estranged after a fateful night in grad school. “Bad Habits” (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $14.99) is Gentry’s third suspense novel. She’ll launch it Feb. 2 virtually, via Bookwoman and the Writers League of Texas, in conversation with New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman.

“It’s about making a villain, but I really believe that villainy and victimhood are situational,” Gentry said in a phone interview. “They occur within a context. … Even the worst people behave badly for a reason.”

“Bad Habits” comes to us through Claire’s filter. For most of the novel, we know her as perpetually yearning Mackenzie “Mac” Woods.

As a teen, she’s forced to be hyper-responsible, living with a single mom struggling with addiction and younger sister Lily, who needs special schooling and doctors. When Gwen moves to town, she’s the new friend of Mac’s dreams – savvy, smart and well-off. The two quickly twine their futures, and eventually both secure admission to a selective graduate program.

“What better place for the making of a villain than graduate school?” quipped Gentry, who holds a doctorate in English from the University of Chicago.

World-building is usually a term reserved for authors in science fiction and fantasy, but it’s relevant here, too. Gentry pulls back the curtain on elite academic culture, scaffolded with pressure to perform and hidden vulnerabilities.

“On a good day, the reading left me buzzing with questions, but I quickly learned not to ask them in class,” Mac tells us. “Classes weren’t for asking questions. They were smartness competitions, chances to attract the attention of the professor and earn a reputation among fellow students.”

Gentry skates to the edge of satire – a takedown of a visiting professor’s lecture by other academics is painfully funny – but her story also is a deft exploration of a system built on alliances and a quasi-family structure.

“Deep down, (Mac) mostly just wants to be loved and cared for, and she’s never felt that she got enough of that,” Gentry said. “She’s just perfectly ripe for someone in that cult of personality to exploit her weaknesses and her desperate willingness to please.”

Enter Bethany Ladd, the charismatic professor nearly everyone wants to impress. Not only is she the queen bee of the Program (yes, with a capital P), she also is the gatekeeper for the coveted Joyner fellowship. Impressing Bethany becomes Mac’s sole goal, leading to dire consequences.

While Mac and Gwen are both white, Gentry shows how students of color are sidelined and gaslit. Her fictional examples mirror those she’s seen in real life: “It’s one of the ugliest parts of academia,” she said. Here, too, is evidence of the financial privilege often required to succeed in elite programs that leave little time for jobs that pay a living wage.

Those are universal challenges, and indeed, you don’t need to be part of the rarefied academic world to revel in “Bad Habits.”

“Anybody who's worked in any kind of toxic workplace will recognize the kind of dynamics at play,” Gentry said. “Anyone who's woken up with a knot of dread in their stomach knowing that they have to go to work today and face toxic coworkers or microaggressions or be talked over by some guy or manipulated by a passive-aggressive boss – I think people can relate to that feeling.”

Amy Gentry book launch
What: Book launch for “Bad Habits,” in conversation with New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman. The event includes a Q&A and discussion of craft, in partnership with the Writers League of Texas.

When: 7 p.m. Feb. 2

Cost: Free

Information and registration: writersleague.org or ebookwoman.com

DNF’ed at 50%
I really gave this one a fair shot, it sounds like everything I enjoy in a thriller but I think it was a bit mismarketed. Halfway through and nothing thrilling happened, lotsssss of backstory involving petty drama, this just wasn’t for me unfortunately

Twisty, compelling…this book had me turning the pages till the early hours of the morning.

Set in the world of academia, the intertwined stories and Gwen and Claire comprises a lot of the psychological and socio-ideological notions between two women. A gripping plot filled with an intensity that shows you how far another woman will go to fulfill her own desire and feed her own psyche.

Once you pick it up, you won’t be able to put it down.

I really wish I could have liked this book, but it just didn't work out that way. I didn't care about anyone, the "accident," or the mysterious Program (it was never defined and always capitalized). The course names involved in the Program seemed nonsensical and pretentious. I don't know what kind of graduate program the characters were enrolled in, but all of them behaved and spoke in extremely immature ways.

Mac, now calling herself Claire, tells the story in the near future (New Year's Eve 2021, but I don't think there's any mention of NYE or the fact that the next day is New Year's Day and Claire has an interview?) and in flashbacks to 10 years before, when she and best friend Gwen were enrolled in the Program. Everyone involved is back-biting and competitive, although Mac seems to be quite a slacker when it comes to schoolwork (how did she even get in?). Mac/Claire also winds up having to care for her drug-addicted mother and special needs sister, sometimes just by giving them money and sometimes by dropping everything to get back home to help.

The students enrolled in the Program are all jockeying to get the Joyner. Again, never really explained, but always capitalized. I'm guessing it's money, fame, looks good on a resume? The professor who seems to be heading up the Program, Bethany, is controlling, confusing, and not a nice human. Among other things, both she and her husband have affairs with their students (and keep their jobs?). Ultimately, this involves Mac and Gwen and tragedy ensues.

I felt like this could have been more cohesive. It could have explained things better, especially if the things are pivotal to the story. But in the end, I slogged through it and am happy it is done.

My thanks to Houghton Mifflin and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Loved this! So good, so exciting, so gripping and great story. Can't wait to read more by this author - absolutely brilliant.

This was a suspenseful book but I found it difficult to get into because of the characters. This book was very slow paced.

A fast-paced thriller set in the world of academia, high school friends go against each other for a coveted graduate program. They meet years later and new problems occur.

A decent thriller, but did not blow me away!

Bad Habits firmly cements Amy Gentry as a novelist who writes powerful thrillers about the darkest corners of the human heart. Clare, known as Mac during her youth, wants desperately not to be poor and stuck in her dead-end town. And when dazzling, rich Gwen enters her life in high school, the two become fast friends, best friends. They decide to attend graduate school together, both embarking into a prestigious program called just that.

The Program is both a skewering of academia and a deep, dark dive into how far prople will go to get what they want and the damage it can cause to not just to others but to themselves.

As always, Amy Gentry writes beautifully about the darkness that's hidden in all of us and what happens when it's unleashed and more frighteningly, how we can try and try to escape who we are and how that can never happen.

I requested this book after reading a CrimeReads.com article Amy Gentry wrote about the "Dark Academia" genre, which she describes as "...the gothic, bookish online aesthetic that adopts The Secret History as its foundational text. We are now living, belatedly, in the age of Tartt." HELLO, YES, PLEASE. I first read The Secret History while jammed up in a crappy loft bed in a college dorm room in 1993, and despite having read one zillion books since then, I can still remember how blown away I was when I read it. Foundational, indeed.

ANYWAY - From the very start of Bad Habits, you know Claire/Mac has done some terrible things in her pursuit for academic glory. Her family life is garbage -- her dad vanishes never to be seen again, her mom is a manipulative narcissist with a drug problem, and her younger sister requires constant care. Mac is desperate to reinvent herself to escape the constant, looming threat of failure, and uses this fear and her tumultuous family history to justify the many. MANY shady choices she makes on her quest for improvement.

She uses her best friend, the always perfect Gwen (smart, beautiful, charming, with a wealthy, intact family), as her aspirational goal, while resenting Gwen's charmed life at every turn. Everyone in this book (except Tess) is unapologetically terrible, and I loved it.

My only (minor) complaint is that the final sneaky reveal at the end felt unnecessary -- the story and characters were strong and layered enough without needing an extraneous "twist" thrown in, but whatever - FIVE STARS.

* review posted on IG @leavemetomybooks on 3/3/21

Thoroughly enjoyable although it's extremely over the top and has a lot of absurd plot twists along the way. However the characters are well-grounded and the author creates an amazing sense of suspense.

Bad Habits begins with Claire/Mac at a conference where she runs into an old friend, Gwen. Seeing Gwen launches us into a second timeline, where Claire/Mac recounts how she ended up in grad school and the very shady things that went down there. The narrative switches between the two timelines as we get closer and closer to the event that made these two best friends not see each other for ten years. I thought that the tension and the plot were well executed, and I appreciated how no detail was left unexplained. However, I did not love its overblown depiction of academia, esp in the strange subjects people seem to study, like “radical negation.” Maybe the useless, nonsense topics fit for some disciplines, but it seems unfair to paint all of academia with the same brush. Also, the revelation at the very end seemed a little too pat to me.

Thank you to both NetGalley and Goodreads FirstReads, for my e-Arc.

Attending an academic conference, Humanities professor, Claire "Mac" Woods is riding high on her reputation, until she spots...her, Gwen. Gwendolyn Whitney. They have a history.

They first met in high school when Gwen moved to Wheatsville, IL with her family. Because of their last names, they were in the same home room. But, that's where their similarity ends. Gwen was everything Mac was not : wealthy, elegant, intelligent, and cultured, it all came so easy to her. She was a "have." Whereas Mac, burdened by poverty, an addict mom, and special-needs sister was, decidedly, a "have-not." Still, they became unlikely friends.

But, what Mac did have was drive and ambition. She worked herself to the bone to keep up with Gwen. Ultimately, both were granted admission to the same top graduate program and...competed for the same coveted fellowship.

The Joyner fellowship could transform their career and, in turn, their life. But there is a price. Is it worth it? Will they be willing to pay? How much? Even Mac and Gwen themselves don't know.

The plot shifts in time and setting from their teenage years in Wheatsville, to graduate school at Dwight Handler University and finally to the SkyLoft Hotel, venue of the academic conference, depicting the changes in their careers and relationship dynamic.

The blurb, setting, and genre of this book drew me in so I was excited to get the opportunity to read and review it. Although the book had its moments, I thought it was just ok. The wordiness and excessive jargon slowed the pace and made the story feel long.





Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

A promising read by this great author, as usual.... I enjoyed the premise & the story clipped along at a great pace. Thanks for the ARC!

I thoroughly enjoyed this and found the writing to be exquisite. The plot had multiple layers of tension and everything came through in the end for a monster twist. I loved the descriptions of academia and laughed out loud at the absurdity of some of the passages. It actually made me glad that I didn’t go on to get my PhD in English. The characters were well-drawn and multilayered. There was a lot going on in this but it all fit together brilliantly. Thrillers with an academic setting are prevalent but the execution of this was fresh and original.

Mac and Gwen are friends from High School that find themselves ending up in the same graduate program. In typical grad school fashion, things start to get competitive between them. Mac, driven by jealousy of Gwen, starts to play dirty.

Fast forward years later and Mac and Gwen run into each other again at a conference. This is when Mac’s real story starts to come to light.

I liked this book. This was my second Amy Gentry book and I will likely read more of her books in the future.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for my copy in exchange for my honest review.