Book Review: Good Girls by Glen Hirshberg

A review copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Good Girls by Glen Hirshberg

Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Book 2 of Motherless Children

Publisher: Tor (February 23, 2016)

Length: 352 pages

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Good Girls was introduced to me as the standalone sequel to Motherless Child which immediately put me in a bit of a dilemma, because standalone or not, I don’t like to jump in mid-series if I can help it. Nevertheless, Glen Hirshberg’s name has been making some big waves in the horror genre lately and I’ve been meaning to check out his work for a while now. I admit that in the end, it really didn’t take much convincing for me to throw caution to the wind and dive in with both feet!

Almost right away though, I could sense the drawbacks from not having read Motherless Child. While this sequel primarily focuses on a new protagonist, it also follows several returning characters who feature quite prominently in the story, namely Jess and those with her who survived the fallout from the end of the first book. Good Girls also sees the return of The Whistler, the antagonist who was responsible for turning Jess’s daughter Natalie into a vampire (that said, this is in no way your typical “vampire story”). More monster than man, The Whistler is back on the hunt now, not having forgiven Jess after she was forced to kill her own daughter, thus robbing him of his Destiny.

Ending up caught in the crosshairs is Rebecca, a young college student and the aforementioned new protagonist. Since fleeing the South, Jess has settled in New Hampshire with the remnants of her family, which includes her orphaned infant grandson Eddie whom Rebecca is hired on to babysit. Completely unaware of her employer’s gore-soaked past, Rebecca and her friends are staying near her campus for the summer when one day they inadvertently catch the attention of The Whistler, who has followed his prey all the way to this quiet little college town to seek his revenge.

My final verdict is that while Good Girls can indeed be enjoyed as a standalone, I still can’t help but feel that not having read Motherless Child affected my experience somewhat. Perhaps the biggest challenge was trying to tease apart the web of relationships. Jess, her lover Benny, and Natalie’s best friend Sophie are all apparently characters from the first book, but that fact wouldn’t be obvious if you’d jumped into this one blind. You’d meet them for the first time in chapter three, abruptly introduced amidst a scene of utter carnage, with little to no context of what had happened. The same goes for the indeterminate Aunt Sally and her evil minions lurking in the shadowy hollows of the Mississippi Delta. The story eventually revealed enough to allow me to fill in the gaps, but throughout most of the novel, that sense of playing catch-up never truly left me. Only after finishing Good Girls and going back to check the publisher’s description of the first book was I able to piece together the full picture and understand how these characters fit into the narrative.

Still, in spite of these obstacles, I was able to appreciate the story overall. Rebecca is an intriguing character, haunted by her own past of being raised in a foster home by a troubled couple. What’s interesting to me is how her character is complemented by Hirshberg’s prose. His writing style isn’t exactly my cup of tea, being on the clunky side with too many distracting interruptions mid-sentence, but the distance this creates to the protagonist somehow feels appropriate. Rebecca is someone who prides herself on her empathy and in turn those close to her feel a measure of comfort in her presence, but there’s also an aloofness to her that the author does such a good job of “showing” without having to ever “tell”.

As a matter of fact, this entire novel is suffused with a kind of intensity that’s so thick it’s almost palpable, raising my sensitivity to the story’s more personal and emotional themes. As a result, I think I found the atmosphere of this “Horror” novel to be more grim, desolate and sobering than anything, as opposed to being truly terrifying, creepy or disturbing. It raises some interesting questions about love and family, grief and sacrifice, and of when to hold on versus when to let go.

Do I recommend Good Girls? Yes. However, I would also strongly advise reading Motherless Child first. I honestly think I would have enjoyed this book even more if I had done the same (I have plans to go back and read it now, that’s for sure) and at the very least, I probably would have had less trouble getting into the beginning of the story. This isn’t your typical supernatural horror, but it’s definitely well worth the read.