Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a 'semifamous' local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends.

After spending time in treatment with other young women like her-who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves-Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she 'like-likes' but who had pined for Ellis instead. Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. Clues about the murderer's identity are available to careful readers, but many will be surprised by the final revelation.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. Romantic and family conflicts in each girl's storyline, from Caitlin's navigating a relationship with her ex-boyfriend's younger brother to Ava's hiding her stepmother's cruel abuse to Mackenzie's best-friend–turned-rival Claire competing with her for boys' attention, ensure each chapter is chock-full of back-stabbings and barbed words.

Shepard, famed for her Pretty Little Liars series, uses the tension inherent in this premise just as deliciously in this sequel as in the original volume. Because the girls have secrets that make them look suspicious-the prank they'd played on a murdered student, their having snuck into their teacher's house just before he was killed-each is reluctant to tell the authorities what she knows. Shortly thereafter, someone began committing murders in exactly the manners named. The follow-up to gossipy thriller The Perfectionists (2014) begins with its protagonists reeling from a teacher's death.Ī prologue helpfully brings new and returning readers up to speed: Mackenzie, Julie, Caitlin, Parker, and Ava started talking in English class about whom they'd like to see killed and how they'd do the deed.

The Good Girls by Sara Shepard