Real Bad Things by Kelly J. FordMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
First, I’d like to thank Netgalley, Thomas & Mercer, and Kelly J. Ford for a DRC of Real Bad Things.
After twenty-five years, a body is found near the dam on the Arkansas River near Maud, AR., a divided town of the well-to-do – Maud Proper, and Maud Bottom, for the struggling unfortunates like Jane, who have always found life a struggle. For Jane Mooney, the probability that the body is Warren Ingram, her stepfather whose murder she confessed to at the age of seventeen, it brings back a terrible period in her life. When she hears the news, she leaves her unsettled life in Boston, MA and returns to face whatever awaits her in Maud.
In Real Bad Things, Jane confronts her past that is littered with strained relationships: her mother, Diane, who insists on making every second of Jane’s return a deep regret, her former girlfriend, Georgia Lee, who is now married and has two boys, her half-brother, Jason, who resists Jane’s efforts to rekindle their sibling closeness from decades earlier, and good friend, Angie, whose anger after all these years later puzzles Jane.
Ford deftly leads her readers through the story using the alternative viewpoints of Jane and Georgia Lee. She shows that memory can be an unreliable tool, especially when you draw conclusions based on incomplete information. It seems all these characters have a secret to tell and it’s only when each of them raises their curtain of deception that Jane has any chance at freedom and peace.
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