Beautiful Bad -- TLC Book Tour & Giveaway!!

Author: Annie Ward
Genre: Suspense
Type: Trade Paperback
Pages: 368
Source: TLC Book Tours
Publisher: Park Row
First Published: March 5, 2019
Opening Lines: I type, "Should I see a therapist?"

Book Description from GoodReads: Things that make me scared: When Charlie cries. Hospitals and lakes. When Ian drinks vodka in the basement. ISIS. When Ian gets angry... That something is really, really wrong with me.

Maddie and Ian's romance began with a chance encounter at a party overseas; he was serving in the British army and she was a travel writer visiting her best friend, Jo. Now almost two decades later, married with a beautiful son, Charlie, they are living the perfect suburban life in Middle America. But when a camping accident leaves Maddie badly scarred, she begins attending writing therapy, where she gradually reveals her fears about Ian's PTSD; her concerns for the safety of their young son, Charlie; and the couple's tangled and tumultuous past with Jo.

From the Balkans to England, Iraq to Manhattan, and finally to an ordinary family home in Kansas, sixteen years of love and fear, adventure and suspicion culminate in The Day of the Killing, when a frantic 911 call summons the police to the scene of a shocking crime.From the Balkans to England, Iraq to Manhattan, and finally to an ordinary family home in Kansas, sixteen years of love and fear, adventure and suspicion culminate in The Day of the Killing, when a frantic 911 call summons the police to the scene of a shocking crime.

My Rating: 3 stars

My Review: Beautiful Bad is a slow burn domestic thriller that begins with a brutal crime then goes back in time so readers can piece together what happened and figure out the identities of the victim and the culprit. 

Telling the story in reverse order worked well and had me eager to figure out what happened and 'whodunnit'.  A lot of page time is spent piecing together the earlier lives of Maddie, Jo and Ian - who aren't an overly unlikable bunch (but they don't always have to be, right?). The bonds between Maddie and Jo and Maddie and Ian are told more than shown to the reader so I didn't find their connections strong enough to warrant some of their later choices. But I was in it to solve the crime which had some good twists even though it is relegated to the outer edges of the story until it takes centre stage later in the book.

I liked the premise and the building tension as Ward includes good nail-biting scenes with an unreliable narrator to keep readers guessing. But with the addition of multiple POVs, dual timelines and so much page time devoted to their early lives, it felt like the book may have been trying to be too many things. But once the focus was back on the crime, much later in the book, my interest was once again piqued. There is a good twist with a strong creepy factor but with some editing down, I feel this book would have been more tense and impactful.

Overall, this book had an interesting premise and good twists. If readers can hold on and wait for the unveiling of the crime, Beautiful Bad has some good tension, characters who are extremely flawed and a solid twisty ending.



Many thanks to TLC Book Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour and for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Book Giveaway

The publisher has given me one copy of Beautiful Bad to give out to one of my lucky readers (sorry, the publisher has restricted this giveaway to US residents only).

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