I was hoping for more from this book was left not really being able to say anything good about it. While the writing was good I just didn't fully like it. 3 stars.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the free copy of The Girls Are Good by Ilaria Bernardini in exchange for my honest review.

I’m not sure how I feel about this one still. I liked it while I was reading it but I found it very forgettable. I did really like the characters and the story line.

An excellent read that really makes you get to know the characters and delve deep into the plot. A nice easy read.

🥇🤸‍♀️Book Review:
Title: The Girls Are Good
Author: Ilaria Bernardini
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/4 stars

Whew. This story was dark. It's about the other side of gymnastics that we, as viewers, do not see on the screen. I had a close friend from childhood who was very involved in gymnastics, and unfortunately, she developed some major mental health issues from this sport. She passed away not very long ago at a very young age from what was to be believed health issues stemming from this past. Such a tragic end to my friends life. This book explores the dark secrets that have been revealed throughout the years in regard to the life of a gymnast. This was a tough read. Although I did not enjoy reading about the darkness, I did the think the book was written very well.

📢Trigger Warning📢
Sexual and verbal abuse, manipulation, bullying, eating disorders, OCD, obsession, psychological disassociation, death, pedophilia, etc.

Thank you to @netgalley and @harpercollinsuk for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

WOW!

This one is a sure fire way to take your own breath away.

Just the title alone had my blood rushing.

When I was younger I was heavily involved in elite cheerleading and gymnastics so after reading the synopsis I knew instantly this book would be right up my alley. The accuracy and references to the world that once consumed me was incredibly accurate.

Girls are scary, helicopter parents are even scarier lol.

This book right here is jam packed with twists, turns, and immeasurable amounts of deceit . If you are looking for a suspenseful book that will keep you on the edge of your seat and swiftly turning (or swiping) pages, then The Girls Are Good, is perfect for you.


Teaser :

In the tradition of My Dark Vanessa and The Divines, a bold coming-of-age novel set in the competitive, high stakes and controversial world of elite gymnastics

Martina wants to be the best gymnast in the world. But so does everyone around her.

During one week of intense competition, Martina and her teammates are tested to the limit. Any sign of weakness can quickly spell the end. And within seven days, an intense obsession will lead to murder.

Every girl will do anything to win… but at what cost?

When I was a child, the world of gymnastics looked so glamorous. I was a young teen when the USA’s Magnificent Seven won gold at the 1996 Olympics, and all of my friends and I were obsessed with the sport, attempting to recreate the gymnasts’ routines in our backyards and arguing over which girl was our favorite (everyone loved and wanted to be Dominique Moceanu.). To us, being a gymnast performing dazzling tricks on the world stage seemed like a dream come true, but reality was much different.

In recent years, gymnasts have found their voice and are speaking out against the abuses committed against them in the name of winning gold. From mental to physical to sexual abuse, gymnasts have proven that all that glitters is not gold. In fact, there’s something downright rotten in the sport. Ilaria Bernardini’s The Girls are Good continues to expose the dark underbelly of women’s gymnastics, following an Italian team over a week’s time at a competition in Romania that ends in murder.

Divided up by days of the week, The Girls are Good takes readers through each day of the competition, highlighting the rigorous regimes gymnasts go through to compete and showing that mental gymnastics play as big a part in their performance as does their physical feats. As the competition builds, so does the tension among the girls as they all vie to be the best. Combining true-to-life accounts of sacrifice, strife, and abuse with a sensational murder story, The Girls are Good strips the glamour from gymnastics and leaves us with much to think about.

It was an experience for me to read a gymnastics story that follows a group of girls not from the United States. Even in the face of abuse and competition, US gymnasts typically show a supportive, smiling face to the crowd, but the girls in Bernardini’s novel are downright nasty. I am not sure if this is how Bernardini wrote the girls, if it is a cultural difference, or if something got lost in translation, but The Girls are Good shows that the girls are, in fact, bad.

Following the POV of Martina, a quiet girl on the team who comes from poverty and who can never shine as bright as the team’s stars Carla and Nadia, The Girls are Good demonstrates how ugly girls can be to each other when there is something at stake. Martina is required to bunk up with Carla and Nadia, best friends who have an unsettling obsession with each other, and through her eyes, we see that Carla especially is rude, crude, and no prude. She bullies her teammates and friends, rages against the competition, and behaves in a hyper-sexualized manner, likely due to the abuse she and the rest of the girls on the team have suffered at the hands of their doctor.

This story is dark, dirty, and difficult to read, but it is also incredibly revealing and thought-provoking. Should we be submitting our youth to the treacheries of the sport at such a young, impressionable age? How can we trust those who claim to have young gymnasts’ best interests at heart? And what are the repercussions for winning gold? Is it really worth it? Read The Girls are Good if you wanted to be horrified by the dark side of gymnastics.

A haunting and harrowing thriller and emotional narrative that dives into the competitive nature of junior gymnastics. This story is definitely not for the faint of heart of for those looking for a light and easy read. It details graphic physical, psychological, and emotional abuse as well as the extreme pressures that come with being in a competitive sport. This story will make you feel many emotions.

Pub date: 1/24/23
Genre: coming of age, #metoo
Short summary: Martina is a member of an Italian junior gymnastics team - but the beauty of their gymnastics camouflages a darker world of abuse and obsession.

This is a really hard book to rate, as I feel that the description from the publisher doesn't really cover what this book is about. Like many other reviewers, I expected something like Pretty Little Liars meets gymnastics; instead, I got a very, very dark tale of a gymnastics team on the brink. This book should come with basically all the trigger warnings.

The blurb compares this book with MY DARK VANESSA, and I agree in that the narrative is unsettling. But in MY DARK VANESSA, I felt there was more hope that the protagonist would process her trauma (having a present and past timeline helps here). THE GIRLS ARE GOOD is just dark from start to finish - the girls are abused, and they abuse each other in turn.

I also wonder how accurate the gymnastics depiction is in this novel. I follow gymnastics from a US lens, where elite-level competition is primarily an individual sport (apart from the teams named by the governing body for events like worlds and the Olympics). The Italian team here was structured differently, competing as a team from a single gym against other gyms, with 2 team stars and most of the other girls knowingly relegated to second best.

I'm settling on a 3 star rating because my main complaint is that the book didn't match the blurb, and I did find it a compelling read. However, I would only recommend it to readers who enjoy very dark subject matter.

Thank you to Harper 360 for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An intimate look at the dark side of elite gymnastics. A solid read-alike to Susan Mihalic's DARK HORSES. A recommended first purchase.

The Girls Are Good is a beautifully written book about an often deeply traumatic but mostly idealized subject - elite sports. Through her writing, the author truly allows the reader to feel the anxiety, the nervousness, the depression, and the compulsion of the athletes. As a former athlete who was also training for the "big goals", I believe Ilaria Bernardini successfully hits on the thought processes of a 15-year-old who is in a high-pressure, do-or-die environment with fellow teammates who both resent her and need her.

Martina, along with her teammates, is competing at an international gymnastics competition in Romania. She is one of five on her team. Carla (the star) and Nadia are inseparable. The other two are, well, extras. Where does Martina fit in? How far is the team willing to go to ensure their star (Carla) is happy?

This isn't a "who-done-it" thriller. This is a gripping, emotional, poetic look into the world of gymnastics.

This book takes place during one week of intense gymnastics competition between Martina and her teammates. I read the description and thought this would be a great read for me. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. The story moved way too slow for my liking and when the climax finally came, it just wasn't that interesting. I found the prose very stilted and fragmented. Many of the characters, particularly Carla and Nadia, were just horrible. There was not one thing to like about them. Sorry to say that this book just wasn't for me. Thanks @netgalley for the ARC!

A superb fast paced thriller. I absolutely loved the story and couldn’t stop reading it. It’s perfect for all readers, especially thriller lovers.

📚: The Girls Are Good by Ilaria Bernardini (@ilaria_bernardini)
⭐️: 3/5

It’s important to start this review saying that I expected this book, based on the synopsis, to be a YA/NA murder thriller set in the world of gymnastics. I was wrong, and that is *very not* what this book is.

The very start of this has the Pretty Little Liars-esque, “and one of us will be dead” tone, and then sharply shifts where a murder isn’t the darkness that lingers after the book is finished.

At the core, this book is about adults in positions of power, and the irrecoverable ways their abuse impacts vulnerable children. It’s dark. It’s heavy. There’s a lot of trauma depicted and a lot of ugly trauma processing that is raw and harrowing.

This isn’t a feel good book, and it’s not intended to be a feel good book. And that’s okay, but that aside, a few areas really didn’t hit the mark for me:

1.) Every gymnast depicted shared the identity of being obsessive (from obsessive relationships to undiagnosed OCD) and compliant (“It’s the rule, and you don’t discuss the rules”). While this drives the darker plot home, it felt narrowing to each characters’ identity to have every single one as the same. I left the book asking why not even a peripheral character (a gymnast on another team, maybe?) could show other characteristics?

2.) The ending, spanning the latter quarter of the book, spun out of control. It felt rushed and chaotic - which was likely intended, but missed the mark for me.

Out on January 24th, 2023 - I want to thank @harpercollins360 via @netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. #gifted

This was a challenging read for me, one in which the book did not deliver the same excitement that the synopsis did. The novel explores egregious abuse in gymnastics that is condoned and aided and covered up by coaches and athletes and families who put winning above all else--or who have been groomed into silence or complicity. There is also a deep love and codependent relationship between two of the gymnasts, as viewed from a teammate outside their bond (the protagonist) that turns violent. The inclusion and climax of the murder, though the reader knows from the beginning is where this story is headed, was a storyline that distracted rather than intrigued. It veered into territory richly covered by Megan Abbott, but possibly without the necessary skill to pull it off successfully. Sadly, this one was a miss for me.

In this book, we travel with an elite 15 year old gymnast Martina and her team, as well as their overbearing coach, to a competition in Romania. Coming from an economically disadvantaged background and determined to make her family’s sacrifices worth it, Martina is driven to compete. Only this drive gets her through the abuse and indignities she endures from those around her. This book gives us a look inside the competitive world of elite team gymnastics, including a eating disorders, complex team social and power dynamics, and a creepy physiotherapist ripped from the headlines. I loved the writing, which reminded me of Megan Abbott’s. A study in female friendship, competition, and the horrific lengths people will go to to win both.

Gymnastics encapsulates an entire different meaning of the need to be perfect. Since a very very young age, their world such as personified by Martina, Nadia and Carla, they are taught that it is gymnastics and nothing else is their first love. It is worth the starvation, the pain and complete physical and emotional exhaustion to be the best. It is no wonder that many are stunted in so many aspects of life. What Alex did has come out in the media in real life and it is a shame these girls had to pay the price. No medal is worth what this book stated the team had to continually endure.

The Girls Are Good by Ilaria Bernardini was just as I was hoping it would be.... Unputdownable!

Once I seen the cover and then read the synopsis I knew I needed to read it.
A devastating but brilliant coming-of-age novel set in the ruthless, all-or-nothing and contentious world of elite gymnastics.
Bernardini has given us a frightening but realistic life of gymnast.
It’s well written, I couldn’t put it down and finished it in one day.
The characters here immediately pulled me into their world.
Martina was a well crafted amazing character.
My review here just ant do it any justice I'm sure.... All I know is I loved it.
I couldn't stop reading it. And Ilaria Bernardini sucked me straight into her story.
That deserves five stars in my book!
Vigorous, important, devastating, but most of all, beautifully crafted.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

HarperCollins,
Thank You for your generosity and approving this eARC!

Completely mesmerizing and haunting!
Welcome to the world of junior gymnastics. Young athletes train every day, every week, for hours upon end, sacrificing food, sleep, and childhood. It doesn't matter if something hurts, physically or mentally, as an elite athlete, you are expected to power through. Martina is part of the Italian team hoping for the Olympics. The cut throat world is drawn and skewered by Bernardini as she poetically describes the team's days. From the very start we know a death is forthcoming but we do not know who or how. Join Martina for a long weekend in Romania as her teams attempts to grab a spot one step closer to the Olympic. I guarantee you will be thinking about this book long after you are done. If you like gymnastics, love a slow burn thriller, or just want to add a new author (first time translated to English that is) to your repertoire, The Girls Are Good is for you! #Harper360

Please put caution warnings in the beginning of this book.

I didn’t realize going into it, that it would heavily discuss child molestation, eating disorders etc.

This book is dark and takes you on a ride of what it’s really like to be a young gymnast. However it feels like there’s no actual plot. I had to get to the halfway mark before something resembling a story even started forming.