I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2022 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2022/01/readers-advisory-announce-2022-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

Probably a 3.5…I liked the premise and initially enjoyed the revolving cast of possible bad guys…but toward the end I just started to find all the characters more grating than entertaining…I was hoping to be redeemed with a twist of some sort at the end and, while it was kinda there, it just wasn’t satisfying to me…not bad but just not all that I was hoping for

Teddy Crutcher is a teacher for an exclusive private school.
He likes milk.
Not so much the entitled students he teaches.

One of his former students who’s college career he personally derailed has it out for him.

One of his current students is used to having daddy step in. Teddy is determined to make this kid suffer for the inconvenience.

Samantha Downing paints such vivid, twisty stories with the absolute best quirky details.
The freakin’ milk!!!!

Another fun, enjoyable, twisty thriller that I binge read. I don’t know why I waited so long to read For Your Own Good but it was the perfect book to start my 2022 reading year.

For Your Own Good is dark yet somehow funny and entertaining. It takes place at a private school, one of my favorite settings. The characters all seem to be hiding something but Teddy Crutcher is the worst of them all. I really loved They Never Learn by Layne Fargo and this gave me similar vibes.

I definitely recommend reading For Your Own Good if you like dark, entertaining and suspenseful thrillers.

I quite liked this book - I knew I wasn't supposed to cheer for the bad guy, but I just couldn't help myself. I enjoyed the characters and the setting (I love a dysfunctional elite private school) and was interested to see if Teddy would ever get caught and how. There were a few things that threw me off (the on-page absence of Teddy's wife, for one), and I did wonder how many severely unstable people could be at one private school at one time, but at the end of the day, this book worked for me (even the ending, which I thought was great, but I know others didn't enjoy as much).

Belmont Academy is a prestigious prep school full of dedicated staff and highly motivated students. Teddy Crutcher is a seasoned teacher who has even won the "Teacher of the Year" award. All Teddy wants is for the students to live up to their potential. Is that too much to ask? When people around the school end up dead - murdered, Teddy is very careful to not let it distract him from his mission. The students. Teddy ignores the meddling parents and the pesky police to keep the focus where it should be - the students. Will they be able to find out who is at the root of the murders without interrupting Teddy's mission?

Samantha Downing is such a gifted storyteller. For Your Own Good is an intricate thriller about an elite community. The teachers, the students, and the parents are all entitled in their own way. Belmont Academy is full of people that I would rather avoid. I didn't find myself attached to any of the characters, but I couldn't stop reading. CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS.


Bottom Line - I have been recommending For Your Own Good to all of my teacher friends. Don't we all have a little Teddy Crutcher in us?

Details:
For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing
On Facebook
Pages:384
Publisher: Berkley Books
Publication Date: 7/20/2021
Buy it Here!
Thank you to NetGalley for the book in exchange for an honest review.

I have really enjoyed the other books by this author, but this one was a bit of a miss for me. While I loved the premise and the details the main character really bugged me. The constant references of milk were odd. I understand trying to lead the reader in a direction or to drop hints so they will see the connections later on, but it felt FAR too repetitive to talk about the milk drinking ha!! I will certainly read her next book!

This book dragged for me. I felt no connection to any of the characters. The “twists” weren’t surprising. Overall, I was just disappointed in this book.

I really enjoyed this Samantha Downing book. I like the characters and the school setting. I liked the characters that were introduced and how they weaved together. The storyline was good and I enjoyed how we got into the lead character's head.

For Your Own Good was page turning, creepy, dark and incredibly hard to put down. I’ve never read another book by Samantha Downing but was so impressed with what she did with this story.

Every character is hard to root for except for Zach and even he is flawed in a lot of ways. And genuinely every time you would get to know a character, Downing would rip them away as fast as she had introduced them. It was like Game of Thrones all over. And she created the perfect serial killer- I mean a glass of cold milk at night, definitely serial killer vibes.

I loved that we knew the killer all along and instead just got to see how deep and dark his secrets got and how it twisted everyone around him in his web. All with the pretty evil premise that he was being a great teacher and just wanted the best for his kids.

You know the darkest scenarios you conjure in your head and brush them away? Downing runs with them in such a way where you find yourself watching your step, your back, your drink. If you want to read a book about revenge and dark academia, but from the teacher’s perspective, this one is for you.

This was such a clever and original idea. I loved the character Teddy and he was such a fun time to read about. This is one of my favorites that Downing has written and have recommended this to many people.

For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing is a fun and campy read about a psychopath of a teacher. He's so bad but you find yourself laughing along at his inner thoughts about his coworkers and the families of his students at the elite prep school that he teaches at. This thriller is so fast-paced that you reach the end of the book before you even realize that you've zoomed through all of the pages. Read and enjoy!

This story was extremely entertaining. I did not want to put it down! So many twists and turns and story lines with the characters I didn’t know where it would go. Loved the ending!

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for a review; however all opinions and thoughts are my own.
You can find the full review with hidden spoilers available at my blog: https://eternitybooksreview.wordpress.com/2021/07/20/arc-review-for-your-own-good-a-decent-and-twisty-thriller/


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The Characters:

Out of all the characters, I really only liked Zach. He’s literally the only likeable character, and even so, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m in the minority with liking him.

Why did I like him? He’s one of two people (the other being Courtney) who weren’t entirely messed up and he was kind of relate-able in a sense. Sure, Zach was kind of looking for trouble when he was trying to gather dirt on Teddy, and he did do wrong by bribing a guard, but it was so much easier to still like him and root for him because his intentions weren’t evil. He was just a kid who messed up but learned from the entire situation.

That’s what really made me like him. By the end of the book, I felt like he’d stepped out of his privileged perfect shell and kind of become a better person as a result of everything that happened.

I also sympathized with Courtney even if I didn’t really come to like her since she wasn’t actively there for a good portion of the story. As messed up as this sounds, I was actually kind of glad that Teddy was working to get her out of the pickle she was in.

This is what this book did to me. It made me actually glad that one person was saved at the expense of another. My morality is at stake y’all.

Since we’re already on the subject, let’s talk about Teddy and his morality.

One thing that’s been a constant between Downing’s first novel and this one, is the fact that the story is told primarily from the bad guy’s point of view. That makes you see them in a different kind of light. With Teddy, I didn’t 100% hate him, because I could see where he was coming from, no matter how messed up his thinking was. It made him more human in a sense.

Like, it’s easy to condemn a serial killer in a novel, when you’re reading it from the victim’s or the detective’s point of view. They’re just the bad evil person who’s going around and killing people for some twisted reason. And that makes it so easy to hate them and want them to be caught and punished for it.

But Downing flips that narrative around and we get to see the story from his point of view, which changes the perspective that you get.

Teddy was one hundred percent in the wrong. There is no doubt about that. What he did was horrible and terrible, no matter how much he tried to justify it. But the fact that I saw how it all unfolded from his point of view made it no longer so black and white.

This is not to say that I didn’t hate him or that I hoped he got away with it. On the contrary, I wanted justice to be properly served and it would have been so satisfying to have his righteous holier-than-everyone attitude smashed to dust. I’m just saying that Downing made his character more complex than villains in mysteries usually are.

The only other notable characters were Frank and Fallon. Frank was okay, he was very suspicious at the start of the book and it was interesting to see what happened with him. Though his role in the ending was not my favorite, but I’ll talk about that more in depth later.

Fallon on the other hand was a very interesting complication. I didn’t like her exactly, but she helped reveal and explain a lot of things, so that was helpful. I can’t really say much else without spoiling stuff.

In general, I just wanted to add that the rest of the characters weren’t so engaging. Besides Zach, Fallon, and Teddy, everyone else was like really bland and annoying and super unlikable, so I couldn’t even feel sorry for any of them. They were kind of there just to fulfill a role in the story. It didn’t make me dislike the book though because the plot made up for it, but it did bother me and I would have liked it better if the rest of the characters weren’t so flat.

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The Plot:

This was phenomenal plot-wise. I loved the twists and turns, and how messed up the whole thing was. You already know who’s behind everything but Downing still managed to pack in a bunch of unexpected twists that made this a lot less straightforward than I thought it would be.

There were also a couple of questions that added another layer of mystery, such as what happened to Teddy’s wife, that also helped to influence the plot. It makes you wonder if there is a more sinister force at play and whether everything is truly as it seems. And being the seasoned thriller/mystery reader that I am, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how exactly all those unanswered questions could potentially throw a wrench into Teddy’s plans or surprisingly change the end of the story.

However, while the plot and twists were great, the ending felt a little bit disappointing. I explain more about that below, but in general, I just wish that justice had been served in a different manner.

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Final Reflections:

This was a fun thriller with lots of twists that kept me in suspense for a good majority of the book. Not all the characters were the most interesting, but I did like the ones that stood out, and I love that Downing told the story from the killer’s perspective, rather than from the detective/private investigator’s perspective. It made the story a lot more interesting.

I think Downing is going to become one of my auto-read authors when it comes to thrillers because I’ve liked two of her books so far, and I’m really excited to try any others that she writes.

I’d highly recommend that you give her books a try, especially this one, if you want a suspenseful thriller from the killer’s point of view.

This was my first book by the widely popular Samantha Downing. I read this one in one sitting and loved it so much that I promptly went and bought her other two books! This was a 5 star read for me!

I absolutely love Samantha Downing's books. When I saw she had a knew one I couldn't wait to get my hands on it!

This one was so compelling and was impossible to put down. I loveeeee how she writes in short chapters so I feel like I'm flying through the book.

Her twists are always perfect--definitely didn't see the end to this one coming!

This book was a wild ride- I loved it! Not at all what I was expecting but so fun. Great characters (did I miss some motivation behind people’s actions or were we not supposed to know?) and a plot that moved along. This was quick and fun and I’d recommend.

Teddy Crutcher is the kind of character that gives off creep vibes right from the get go. Yes he won teacher of the year but this man is not your super encouraging Mr. Rogers type guy. He's a "help" students succeed at ALL
costs and God help anyone who gets on his bad side or gets in his way. This is told from multiple points of view Teddy, students, other teachers, former students. Things are just peachy as long as Teddy gets the kudos he feels he deserves but then bodies start piling up at prestigious Belmont High and people start looking a little too closely at Teddy. Very entertaining. Kept my attention throughout. This is the first book I've read by Samantha Downing so I can't compare to her other books but she definitely has a talent for writing love to hate characters.

rounded up from 4.5 stars. this was just pure fun. Downing really has a talent for taking quite sinister scenarios and characters and somehow keeping the tone lighthearted. I was hooked early and tore through this really quickly. definitely recommend for a fun fast-paced thriller!