*Happy Bad* is a brilliant and chaotic road trip novel set in a near-future East Texas, where the world is crumbling under climate destruction and social unrest. Beatrice, a caregiver at an underfunded treatment center for troubled teenage girls, must navigate a brutal heatwave, a massive blackout, and escalating violence as she tries to lead the girls to safety. With sharp humor and a raw, politically charged narrative, this novel is both a poignant exploration of human connection and a fierce critique of societal collapse.

Beatrice is a simultaneously detached and profoundly present. Her internal dialogue is irreverent and comically specific. I LOVE this sort of narrator. I also enjoy coming of age stories, and here we get multiple. I recommend to anyone who enjoys the same.

I loved the premise: in an ecologically bankrupt US in the near future (real), a young woman, Beatrice, who works at a home for girls is tasked with moving them cross-state as the largest environmental crisis yet rages. Also, the girls are going through withdrawal from their pre-FDA approval psych meds. 😅

This story alternates between the world and family of Beatrice’s youth, and those she’s found herself a part of in the present. I think there are some incredibly sad and touching moments tempered by humor.

My chief issues were pacing in the second half, which seemed to start to limp towards the end, and the way that the humor sort of drained away. I could see that being intentional, it just didn’t feel that way to me. I also felt that the book ended abruptly.

I still really enjoyed this and am happy I got a chance to read it. The references to Eastern North Carolina really tugged at my heartstrings since that’s where I spent my childhood.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for the eARC.

Delaney Nolan’s Happy Bad is a haunting and lyrical debut that burrows into the psychic landscape of a young woman grappling with trauma, self-destruction, and fleeting moments of tenderness. Set against the sun-bleached decay of the American South, the novel leans into an atmosphere of emotional rawness, where desire, violence, and survival twist together like tangled roots.

At the heart of the story is our unnamed narrator, a young woman fresh out of prison, wandering through a world that offers her little redemption or structure. Her internal monologue—fragmented, poetic, and at times brutally honest—draws readers into a disorienting headspace shaped by cycles of abuse, addiction, and alienation. The narrative is non-linear and impressionistic, more interested in sensation and emotional texture than plot mechanics, echoing the works of writers like Denis Johnson or Jenny Offill.

Nolan’s prose is what elevates Happy Bad beyond its grim subject matter. Her language is sharp, intimate, and visceral, capable of swerving from stark realism to aching beauty within a single paragraph. Every line feels deliberate, heavy with implication, yet light enough to float—much like the narrator herself, drifting between connection and isolation.

The novel’s strength lies in its refusal to moralize or neatly resolve its conflicts. Nolan instead opts to render her protagonist’s world in unflinching clarity, where love is both a salve and a wound, and healing is never guaranteed. While this ambiguity may frustrate some readers looking for narrative closure, it resonates as a deeply honest portrayal of a fractured life.

Happy Bad is a compact, brutal, and beautiful novel that lingers long after the final page. Delaney Nolan has crafted a voice that feels urgent and necessary—an aching howl into the silence of forgotten lives.

I really enjoyed this novel. I enjoy novels where the narrative is internal dialog. It makes you feel like you are that person, at that moment in time. This was a dark story at times but very interesting and kept me enraptured. Look forward to more by this author.