Bad Things Happen Here

Rebecca Barrow — 2022

I Killed Zoe Spanos meets The Cheerleaders in this haunting mystery about an island town with a history of unsolved deaths—and a girl desperate to uncover the mystery behind it all. Luca Laine Thomas lives on a cursed island. To the outside world, Parris is an exclusive, idyllic escape accessible only to the one percent. There’s nothing idyllic about its history, though, scattered with the unsolved deaths of young women—deaths Parris society happily ignores to maintain its polished veneer. But Luca can’t ignore them. Not when the curse that took them killed her best friend, Polly, three years ago. Not when she feels the curse lingering nearby, ready to take her next. When Luca comes home to police cars outside her house, she knows the curse has visited once again. Except this time, it came for Whitney, her sister. Luca decides to take the investigation of Whitney’s death into her own hands. But as a shocking betrayal rocks Luca’s world, the identity Whitney’s killer isn’t the only truth Luca seeks. And by the time she finds what she’s looking for, Luca will come face to face with the curse she’s been running from her whole life.

Reviews

Ian Brakspear@ibrakspear

Oct 18, 2023

When I was looking for my next thriller book to read, I found this one hidden on my shelfs and decided that it was time to pick it up and give it a read and I found within was a story with lots of dark secrets hiding within the world that seems glamorous, but 1 girl is detrained to dig them up.

Luca Laine Thomas is a 17-year-old that loves on Parris, an island to a community of rich elites. Parris is also an island that’s haunted by a history of dying girls. From house fires and drownings to back-alley assaults, girls keep dying on Parris in terrible, unsolved ways. Luca, who lost her Polly best friend three years ago in what was ruled an accidental drowning, thinks it’s not just a series of deadly coincidences, but a curse. Most people on Parris think of the curse as nothing more than a schoolyard story, content to ignore it in favour of a life of careless decadence on the island, but Luca believes otherwise. When another death occurs, Luca decides it’s time for her to investigate the curse herself.

Luca has always felt more out-of-place on Parris: mixed-race in a very white community, queer but not very open about her sexuality, mentally ill in a world that’s not understanding about that. As we travel through this book, we see things from her perspective as she goes about solving this Murder to give herself the answers and closure that she needs.

Overall, The only thing that took me a long time to get my head around was the Point of View of the View, Its told from Luca’s POV but almost written from a 3rd party watching her and it felt a little jarring at times, However I would recommend Bad Things Happen Here to readers with an interest in a character-driven thriller.

Holly@hollyck

Apr 29, 2023

I think that there are a lot of really good elements explored in this book, but when they're combined it ended up quite messy. I'll try to go over some of the things that didn't work here:

-No closure: only one death is "solved," and to make matters worse, when it is solved, Luca immediately abandons any notion of trying to get justice/answers for any of the other victims

-Shallow explorations of deeper topics: like the police force blaming Whitney for a supposed drug habit, suspecting Luca because she's a fat, Black girl, white privilege/white people's stories being believed, parents not understanding mental health, being closeted in a homogenous society where standing out is bad

what happens then is that this book ends up with some great lines of prose, but they're overshadowed by the mentions of super serious topics that don't get the same treatment as say, Luca's musings on love. Not to say that every book about the Black experience has to deal with pain and suffering, but this book brought topics up only to drop them fairly quickly.

One thing this book nailed, though, was mental health rep. Luca doesn't outright say it, but she does seem to have a form of OCD--and it's depicted accurately!! I don't want to armchair diagnose her, but the intrusive thoughts/obsessions were very accurate to situations I've had, as someone with OCD.

I wanted to like this book more, but it was just not for me.

This review contains a spoiler

Zoe Smolen@booksatlunch

May 23, 2022

I'm so gutted to give this a three star, but it just wasn't there for me. Things I loved: - Queer Black main-character - Mental health representation - Atmospheric Things I didn't like - Felt like an adult title retrofitted to be YA - especially some of the background plot lines - Most of the side characters felt like caricatures Overall, this will be a great summer beach read, but I wish it has been a little more.