I look odd books and this book was quite odd. It follows Helen, a woman living alone and estranged from her family. Her parents have been jailed for an outrageous abuse. Her father constantly calls her to try to help him get parole, but Helen can't fathom that, nor can she directly tell him No. In her free time, she begins a relationship with a female couple whose prodding forces her to face the trauma of her past head-on.

Best, most propelling thing I’ve read since Deliver Me. As uniquely dark and female. Cool drawings within of fruit and flowers. We immediately understand how this young woman is full of nervous energy: Her parents were locked up for drugs and lethally neglecting their kids and Grandma, letting them rot in their own filth. She is reckless yet anxious, a nympho lesbian. She’s on OTC uppers or naturally manic, scrubbing her filthy flat and cancelling dates. BPD would be no surprise as she’s all about manipulation and longing to find a “worthy” girl. There are no quotation marks or clear timelines though it fits her scattered brain, the sense she’s unreliable or omitting even to us. Especially since she can seem more worrisome than the dementia-ish grandma.

Crazy in a pretty accessible mindset. Scanning restaurants for dead family, speaking in flowing fragments, imaging mild violence she wants don’t to her. Psychoanalyzing her and everyone’s smallest action in prose. Perverted like the men she fears. She meets a lesbian couple she wants to move in and dominate her. They seem like young pimply Valley Girls transplanted to New England, a bit snippy but normal, calm, minus the frequent kissing. But our girl Helen wants them attentively mean. “There’s a visibility in embarrassment,” she says. Before they seal their arrangement, we find out Helen works at a law firm and freely films her feet for fellow lesbians.

Things steadily escalate so Helen always seems far more sexual/deviant than them. The couple plays mind games though, disorienting teases about where they live or how they got together. The younger one, Katrina, watched her office feet show, and suddenly Helen feels skittish. Or so she plays, occasionally craving the upper hand she didn’t have in childhood to make someone feel ashamed. The language is so fluid, sometimes rhyming or extra gravitational like poetry, (even in easy subversions like saying swallowing “warmth” instead of puke, or “her pitch dropped into a wound,” but still rings so true. This must be a few people’s reality in totality and plenty in shades: mommy and daddy issues, fickle submission, anxiety, suicide you wish someone would do for you.

We continually chip away at our many questions, nothing ever feeling unnatural, rushed or slogged. The nerve spirals are almost psychedelic, which befits the blips mentioning her cough syrup addiction—but we never hear any real effects called out or in scene. While the throuple progresses, her dad keeps guilting her into writing a character letter to help him at his next parole hearing. She’s reluctant but a conflicted people-pleaser, and so the drama gets a double billing. At the end of chapters we’re usually reminded with a sentence that this story is told looking back and she keeps making the wrong moves, so that shovels yet more peril onto the (blue-flowered) plate.

Even though I kinda expect one of the big events, I am still emotionally invested and interested in everybody’s responses, how they play their hand, how similar they really are. So many foils of characters and parallels within parallels nicely spaced apart. The end teases many exciting prospects. The last few sentences felt a tad too soon, limp when we were distracted with family drama, always craving something more about the past, the mom, the brother of not the consequences of tomorrow. Nonetheless, that is only a 1% drawback of a 99% compelling, truly original art piece.

This is a messy queer weird girl book that is an excellent addition to the weird girl canon. There are mommy issues, a lot of bodily fluids and caretaking, and also some weird boundary issues. Our protagonist has a dark family secret which greatly impacts her ability to sustain relationships, and so she searches for an older couple looking for a third with the hope they can take care of her and fulfill her mommy issues. She does find a couple, but of course, it can't be that simple, and she can't get out of her own way.

The mommy issues and general body stuff in this one didn't work for me as well as I was hoping (much more on the Moshfegh side than the Broder side, in my opinion, but if that sounds good to you, I bet you'll love this!), but I am glad I read it.

Thank you to Catapult for the eARC!

I picked this up because the title and cover intrigued me. I finished this book so extremely confused and slightly concerned for Helen. The book kept me enraptured though, so I will give it that. I am not sure if I would read this again, or suggest it to anyone if they are looking for a normal book, as this is one of the weirdest books I have ever read, but if you are looking for a strange lesbian grief/love/mental health novel then I would suggest this one.

I'm pretty disappointed to admit that this one did not feel like a fit for me. I started and restarted the first 50 pages or so and just could not get into it. I think the background narrative of the main character's fraught relationship with her family was quite interesting, but the central storyline was focused on a relationship dynamic that I couldn't quite figure out. From all appearances, it seemed as though the main character was hoping to be the third in a relationship between two women who had sought her out (for what?), but the power dynamics in play were all over the place, and the mc seemed to have trouble expressing what it was that she exactly wanted to happen. I feel like there were perhaps some mommy issues in play (there was an elastic band tugging between her desire to be taken care of and a completely disproportionate desire to push the couple out of her lives and disappear entirely), but I really just did not have the attention or patience to push myself through this story.

Thank you to Catapult for the opportunity to read and review! Based on my early impressions, I feel like this could be a good match for fans of Jen Beagin or Lisa Taddeo.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Catapult for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

This book is the definition of weird girl fiction, but make it sapphic! We learn about Helen and her yearning for familial affection and her deepest, weirdest thoughts. She seeks to quell some of her desires by starting a relationship with a married lesbian couple. She desires a strange relationship that borders the line between fulfilling parental affection and romantic desires.

I really enjoyed the first half of this book where we saw Helen banter with the wives. I loved reading her internal monologue regarding her relationship with them. However, when it came to all the details about her family I was not expecting all of the dark details and scenes. It threw me off a little bit. By the second half, the book was losing me a bit. It felt a little crammed and rushed with the scenes of her coworker and ex. She also kept throwing up a lot, so I may have just been too put off by reading that in such detail lol. 😂🫠 Also by the time we had the situation at the end with her father, I was just kinda like geez something else lol. Even her relationship with her wives near the end just kinda felt all over the place to me. However, if darker weird girl fiction is your jam then you may enjoy this one!!

Not a fan of self-sabotaging, messed up, mommy/daddy issues, sad girl books about a protagonist involved with an older and richer couple. The plus was instead of a heterosexual protagonist, this one was queer. It reminded me of Kristen Arnett and Melissa Broder which isn't my vibe but might be yours.

A new messy, sad girl book for the girlies!

We follow Helen, a 20/30 year old woman trying to navigate her life after her parents were arrested. She tries to heal from this trauma by looking for motherly attributes in a married lesbian couple she hopes to start dating.

As the story goes on, Helen continues to make bad decisions and looks for attention and validation all around her, especially her wives. Her weird, offbeat thoughts and wishes about the people in her life makes for a wild ride of gross and amazing writing.

This book is like a car accident you just can’t look away from. Gross, weird, sad, and an overall entertaining read.

Thank you to Catapult and Netgalley for the ARC!

A Good Happy Girl
Intense, sexy, so dark, and so, so complicated. A hard book to recommend to strangers, as a bookseller and a librarian, but one I hope many choose to read. Two things: Massachusetts doesn’t have happy hours per the law; and the commuter rail doesn’t go to western Mass, you have to take a bus. A third thing: Helen as narrator hitting the reader with the occasional fourth-wall-breaking (I think is the intention??) “understand” is weird and distracting.

An emotional mullet: party in the front, devastating in the back.

As a lawful neutral cishet, I’ve never read anything as chaotic, kinky, claustrophobic, and vulnerable as A Good Happy Girl. It’s like a sapphic, disorienting Sylvia Plath that constantly leaves you feeling forcibly nauseated like the cake boy in Matilda (laudatory).

Marissa Higgins’ stunning writing traps you in the Sunken Place of pleading, violent, intrusive thoughts that is Helen’s mind. She’s so Enneagram 4-coded: self-destructive, emo, exuding learned helplessness. Her history of neglect has led her to seek attention and care at any cost. Somebody HELP HER 😡

For all the people-pleasing eldest siblings who struggle against the Final Boss of being good and good enough.

I wanted to like this one but it was just too slow for me.
I am still completely thankful to the publisher, Marissa Higgins, and Netgalley for granting me advanced reader access to this one before pub day.

for fans of a24's love lies bleeding... you're gonna love this dark lesbian novel coming out
April 2nd!

Helen, an attorney, has just started seeing Catherine and Katrina, a married, lesbian couple. Helen is still dealing with a recent crime her parents just committed when she's pulled into an intense and all consuming relationship with the wives.

this book was unsettling, incredibly immersive, dark, funny, erotic, clever and original. it understood the nuances of lesbianism in a such an intimate way. the commentary on family, self-hatred, and the power of obsession were crafted so well. i had so much fun reading this and will be recommending it to all queer girls! definitely one of my fav lesbian reads ever!!

Here’s the tragically unhinged, sexually charged read of the summer we’ve all been waiting for!

I went in virtually blind and highly recommend doing so, but here’s a two-liner gist of A Good Happy Girl by Marissa Higgins:

Helen is desperate to mentally disconnect from her childhood trauma. She obsessively hooks up with lesbian couples for release and validation.

It is chaotic, emotional and gorgeously written. I absolutely loved this dynamic sapphic story! Fans of Ottessa Moshfegh and Julia Armfield will likely enjoy this one too.

A Good Happy Girl publishes on April 2nd. I received my arc via @netgalley through @catapult publishing.

Thanks to Catapult and NetGalley for the ARC of "A Good Happy Girl" in exchange for my honest review. What a fucked up and powerful debut!

"A Good Happy Girl" is a journey into the life of Helen, a jittery attorney with a penchant for diving headfirst into emotionally charged and complex relationships. This time, it's with Catherine and Katrina, a married lesbian couple whose intimacy and intensity draw Helen into a whirlwind of desire, revelation, and self-exploration. But it's not just about the entanglement; it's about Helen wrestling with a past so tangled and dark, you need a moment to breathe after each revelation.

Marissa Higgins doesn’t just write; she grabs you by the collar and forces you to look into the abyss that is Helen's life. The trauma, the self-destruction, the chaotic dive into the unknown with Catherine and Katrina—it's all laid bare with a rawness that's as beautiful as it is disturbing. Every page feels like walking a tightrope over Helen's psyche, where one misstep could send you spiraling into the depths.

This book is messed up in the best way possible. It’s not just the storyline that hits hard; it’s the way Marissa explores queer domesticity, the shadows cast by incarceration on a family, and the relentless grip of intergenerational poverty. These themes weave through the narrative, painting a picture of life that's as real as it is unsettling. If you're looking for a tidy, feel-good story, this ain't it. "A Good Happy Girl" leaves you with more questions than answers, a testament to its brilliance and Marissa Higgins' courage as a writer.

4.5 stars from me for a book that is sure to be very divisive!

I decided to DNF this book at 12% because it was unfortunately not for me. The lack of quote marks with the dialogue was a choice...I ended up being very confused a lot of the time about whether someone was speaking or whether the text was the main character's thoughts. This confusion was really frustrating as I kept rereading passages and getting stuck trying to understand what was being said. The writing was also really throwing me off for some reason, and I couldn't get into it. It felt like the story was trying too hard to be weird with the main character's thoughts, and I usually love a weird and deranged main character, but it just felt a bit off with this book. I'm sad that I couldn't get into this because I was pretty excited for it and have heard good things from other people online. I think fans of Milk Fed, or just Melissa Broder in general, would like this.

This book was a smoothie of Ottessa, Hillbilly Elegy, and smut all blended together on the mostly boring setting. (It's fitting because it includes several needlessly long passages about smoothie-making.) It also included my favorite ~literary~ pet peeve of omitting quotation marks entirely.

Higgins has a unique voice and I found her exploration of the topics through the narrative to be solid and captivating. It was strange at times yet oddly entertainig for me to read and I can't exactly put my finger on why

Loved this. A book that pays close and careful attention to the kinds of people and relationships that are too rarely depicted in fiction. And the relationship between Helen and the wives is beautifully drawn—extremely queer, nuanced, and messy in the best way.

DNFed at 35%

This book just wasn't for me. I felt as if the scenes I read weren't just intentionally stark or purposefully lacking, but struggled to hold interest in a way that made me want to learn more. It felt like a book meant for fans of Sally Rooney and Poor Things, neither of which I enjoyed.

I did enjoy the twisted inner monologue and the way Helen would inject the oddest sentiments of intense violence or gross attraction. The execution of the world around Helen just wasn't appealing enough to continue.

Thank you Catapult and NetGalley for the ARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

this book was so weird, fun, queer and crunchy!!! the perfect blend
(full review on bookstagram to come)