Fans of Downing’s previous thrillers, My Lovely Wife and He Started It, will find a lot to love about For Your Own Good as she brings the same dark humour and tone to this story, this time set in an elite private school.

This is not a “whodunit” mystery as we meet our quirky, (and honestly fun to read) villain quite early on, and he has no hesitation in letting the reader in on what he is doing and what his “reasons” are for his actions. The tension and suspense in this story are built into the reader wondering if he is ever going to be caught, how he is going to be caught, and just how far he might go before that happens.

Teddy Crutcher is the Teacher of the Year at Belmont Academy and certainly wants to see students succeed. At least, he wants to see students succeed that he has determined should succeed. So, if he needs to help things along, and maybe cause, or prevent, other things from happening, well, surely he knows best…right?

All of the characters at Belmont Academy are well drawn and unique, but the students are most often the focus of the story. These teenagers are never left as just one-dimensional rich kids at a fancy prep school. These are multi-layered young people with complicated lives, thoughts, problems, goals, and allegiances. Downing has drawn these characters so well, for my own personal reading it sets a whole new standard for characterisation of teenagers.

As fans of her work have seen before, Downing can most certainly prolong the suspense and tension! With excellent pacing and smooth, well timed movement between the different characters in the story, she keeps the reader fully engaged and fascinated, waiting for the next twist this story will take. Samantha Downing has made For Your Own Good almost impossible to put down!

WOW! Addictive, deceptive, edge-of-your-seat thrills and craziness all rolled into one deliciously twisted novel. A great recipe for a great thriller!

Ok everyone, if you haven’t read this book yet you NEED TO ASAP!! You will definitely thank me later, once you read it of course!

Teddy was an interesting, intriguing character. He was definitely sinister and twisted and I LOVED IT!! His personality and character in the novel definitely made for a great read that readers will devour! Teddy took actions into his own hands, and did everyone else favours, whether they knew it or not, needed it or not, or even wanted it or not. I flew through the pages in this novel and didn’t want to stop until the very end. And then I wished there was more for me to read.

I cannot say enough great words about this novel. It was awesome. It had me hooked. It was thrills and chills and everything in between!

I am no stranger to novels by Samantha Downing and this book did not disappoint. Well done Samantha on another fantastic novel! I’m looking forward to your next book!

everyone in this book was so fucked up but i loved it, it was kinda like dark academia but with teachers and i thought that was fun. the pacing was a bit off sometimes and i think the only thing that stopped me from giving this book 5 stars was that i thought it was gonna be plot twisty but that’s my own fault considering you learn everything as the book goes on so there was nothing to really get plot twist from. i love that everything tied together in the end. such a fun read.

You will never look at milk the same! This book was great, she just keeps hitting home runs!

A prep school that is more dysfunctional than any public school. It's full of murder, mayhem and what else? Milk! It really draws you in from page one and once you finish the book it still doesn't want to let you go. Am I being vague? Yup because I am a fan of going into books blind, I did with this, and it worked out fabulously.

Read it and then thank me later!

This book gripped me from the first page and wouldn't let go. Dark, twisted, and absolutely wicked Samantha Downing nailed the "dark academia" subgenre. Masterfully plotted, with deceitful characters this is easily one of my top thrillers of the year. Highly recommend!

I have been really excited about this book since I first heard about it, and it definitely lived up the hype and even surpassed my expectations.

For Your Own Good is set in an elite private school, with lots of hidden secrets (and everyone trying to find out those secrets), mysterious deaths, and complicated characters. Readers get put in the heads of a lot of different people, but each character is distinct and fascinating in their own right.

And the twists! So many twists, so many reveals, and I don't think I saw a single one coming, though every single one made sense looking back and was essential to the plot moving forward.

Every choice in this book felt like Downing made it very deliberately, and it shows. I definitely recommend this book, and absolutely intend to go read Downing's previous work now too.

Samantha Downing is truly the master of complex characters in the thriller genre. This modern day story is set at a prestigious high school, which is terrifying enough in its own right. But the cast of characters make this story gripping. Teddy Crutcher is Teacher of The Year, yet he's no friend to the school. Teddy has secrets and plans to teach everyone around him their own individual lessons, even if it means ruining or ending their lives. But when people start dropping like flies at Belmont Academy, Teddy has to get creative or risk getting found out.

This book has so many "messed up" characters that the reader will have no idea who's the murder! Everyone is trying to make someone a better person and all they do is make things worse. Quick read and great book!

4.5 stars

This book is WILD! It's highly addictive and entertaining. It's twisted, devious, and sooo fun!

Set in a prestigious school where students are expected to go to Ivy League schools, the pressure is on for both students and teachers. Meddling parents are continuously watching and willing to do anything for their kids to get a glowing A. But bodies are piling up, everyone's a suspect and the FBI is involved.

For Your Own Good is full of complex and unlikeable characters that will keep its readers guessing what would they do next. We have elitist parents, self-righteous teachers, and pompous students. Skillfully plotted with a straightforward writing style, this book is a page-turner!

It has the right amount of suspense, dialogue, twists, and humor. So excited to see this as a TV series.

Thank you so much, PRH International/Berkley for my review copy. All thoughts and opinions are mine.

I always have trouble with feedback/reviews for things I enjoy. How do I pick apart the reasons why I liked something? Most of the time, the reasoning isn't more complicated than "feels good, man." And that's basically the deal here--I just really enjoyed reading this book. I found it unpredictable, for one thing, which I always appreciate.

3.5 stars. Wild, shocking and twisty!

If you’re looking for a fun, creepy, bonkers book to get lost in, this is it! It’s compulsively readable and highly entertaining in the most addictive, silly, crazy and ridiculous way!

This novel revolves around a prep school with devious and conniving staff and students. Every character had a sneaky, deceitful, evil side that kept me shocked and curious to see how they would fit into the twisted tale. I simply cannot pick who was the worst!

I loved the short, tension-filled chapters that were easy to breeze through. This book is one where you can simply sit back and be entertained without having to think too much. The story unfolds through third person narrative which I had trouble connecting with as I felt it kept me at a distance from the storyline. I also have issues with implausible scenarios and this novel had many which kept me from feeling fully invested. However, the characters are so extremely crazy and unlikeable that I just HAD to know what would happen next. Though this wasn’t a huge winner for me, it is well-loved by many early reviewers and I can completely understand why. Give it a try and see what you think - I promise you’ll have fun with it!

Thank you to Berkley for my review copy!

Oh my goodness this book was AMAZING! Once I picked it up I could not put it down. This is a great story that takes place in a very affluent private school. When teachers and students suddenly wind up getting sick and dying from poison. The school becomes complete craziness! This book twists and turns as you try and figure out who is behind the poisonings and who is going to be the next to die.

This is a definite pick up for thriller lovers! I absolutely loved this one. This is going to be a hard one to top!

Disturbing, darkly humorous, and a zippy read!

Let me tell you!! FOR YOUR OWN GOOD by SAMANTHA DOWNING is quite the twisty and wicked thriller.

I immediately knew that this was going to be a fun and entertaining book for me but what I didn’t know was how weird this book was going to make me feel. At times I was having so much fun with it and at other times I just wanted to walk away. Now here’s the thing: it was such a chaotic and diabolical wacky book that I just couldn’t ignore and walk away from. It’s like I was hooked one minute and not the next. It was like a guilty pleasure. You don’t want to like it but you can’t help yourself because well those characters are so cunning and devious that you can’t help but be entertained by them. You just need to stay tuned to see what kind of shenanigans they are going to get themselves into and yup who’s going to be murdered next.

I was laughing out loud, creeped out (milk is NOT my thing), and entertained. I quite enjoyed how this one kept me guessing and how it all wrapped up. This was a cleverly layered story with a great storyline that I won’t soon forget.

I love that this has been optioned by Robert Downing Jr. for HBO Max. It is definitely going to make an awesome show!

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Berkley Publishing, and Samantha Downing for my digital review copy. Would recommend it!

This just didn't work for me at all. While I liked the school setting, I just did not care what happened to the characters. It was quite dull for me and I never found the thrilling moment. I felt like I could always see what was the next big plot twist. As always, I did enjoy Downing's style, but I want to go back to the vein of My Lovely Wife where there are turns and I'm always wondering what will happen next.

I think the most jarring was the perspectives. There was no rhyme or reason why we'd flip between Sonia, Teddy, Zach, Fallon, Frank and it made the story feel a lot less cohesive. I'll probably try more Downing but this just wasn't for me. If you liked He Started It more than My Lovely Wife, you may love this one. They had similar pacing.

Overall, I loved this book. At times it dragged but I loved the private school setting and the murder mystery. The short chapters were a plus too.

This book was less thriller and more like a juicy soap opera with a mystery storyline and I love that for it.

You’ve probably already seen 101 reviews of this book by now but here’s one more. Is it the worst book I’ve read this year? No! Is it the best? Also, no, BUT maybe I’m missing something because Robert Downey Jr deemed it amazing enough and is adapting this into an HBO series!!

What I enjoyed
All the unlikeable characters. I’m a sucker for a book about a character I can hate
All the gasp worthy moments

What I didn’t enjoy
The ending…I think 🤔It’s been a month since I’ve read this and I’m still unsure whether I liked it or not.

This is a really unique, twisty and diabolical thriller. This felt like such a different read, not following your typical thriller format and it was kind of fun. Chalk full of unlikeable characters, narrated by the bad guy and lots of twists and turns.

Belmont Academy is a prep school where students are expected to be the best of the best and get into all the top Ivy league schools when they're done. All of the extremely wealthy parents are heavily invested in how their children are doing at school and teachers are under the microscope at all times. Teddy, Teacher of the Year, didn't grow up in the same lifestyle as much of his students and the resentment is palpable. He finds the entitlement these kids carry disgusting and has made it his mission to fix them. It gets to the point where Teddy may have taken it too far and Belmont is drowning in scandal.

This is such a fun read with lots of twists and a body count that never seems to end.

Belmont Academy is a prestigious school, where the rich and smart attend. When staff members start mysteriously dying no one knows what to think, or who to trust.

This was a different type of thriller (in a good way). It was odd, dark and twisted. You knew what was going on the entire time with the mysterious deaths but the suspense was more about is that person going to get caught or how far are they going to go with the murders.

I’m a sucker for books that take place in private schools or boarding schools, so of course I enjoyed this one. It was a very interesting thriller with complex, clever characters, and the ending was surprising, almost bittersweet - I didn’t see that coming!

A huge thank you to Berkley Publishing and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

I've been a Samantha Downing fan since her debut, but For Your Own Good is definitely my favorite so far. If you can look at a glass of milk in the future and not be completely creeped out, you're a braver person than I am. Teddy Crutcher is creepiness personified, and I was absolutely all in for every page. He's a classic sociopath, and Samantha portrayed him absolutely perfectly. Love, love, love this one!!!

Huge thank you to @kayepublicity for our gifted review copy of FOR YOUR OWN GOOD by @smariedowning - available now!!

It’s been a good long while since I read a thriller and I picked a great time to return to the genre. I can’t wait to see this one on my TV screen from HBO Max - Robert Downey Jr. is helping develop it! I love this news 3000!

The school setting is wild and draws me in immediately. You feel the tension the students face and that heightens the story.

Downing is so slick. She throws in these little tid bits at the end of the chapter that have me like 😳 and I just keep reading and reading! So damn good!

I really enjoyed this one so much and recommend it for anyone who loves a smart and smooth suspense novel!