Catherine Dang

Oh poor Ivy League Mary, as she was called in her small town of Liberty Lake, for being the smart chubby kid to get accepted into Cornell. Mary once in Cornell thought she would transform herself and became thin and thought she was going to go places. However, she was kicked out of Cornell her senior year and nobody knows the real story what happened, but she is back in Liberty Lake working at the local grocery store.
Olivia, her once long ago BFF, now social media star has gone missing. Mary tries to help uncover answers, but she is reminded that nobody is nice in this town not even herself!

For me the first half was great, but by the end it became dismal. 3.5 stars

Thanks to William Morrow for the gifted copy in exchange for my honest opinion!… (plus d'informations)

I enjoyed the set up and found Mary, the main character's, struggles with her anger and bitterness as well as the realization that in her own way she was as judgmental and stuck up as the classmates who'd mistreated her when she was younger engaging. She wasn't especially likable, but she was an interesting and realistically flawed character.

The mystery elements were also fairly interesting and well done in the first 2/3rds or so of the book. In the last third things started to go off the rails. Mary constantly leapt from suspecting one person to another and each time she was completely and unwaveringly convinced that they were the murderer until she found whatever the next key clue was then she dropped her previous suspect entirely for the next one. She never wavered or slowly reconsidered other possibilities or anything more complex than 'this person did every bad thing that's happened so far'; it was just a sudden flip. Then as things started to wrap up, the events got increasingly outlandish. The real murderer's motivations were cliched and uninteresting and his behavior bordered on cartoonishly evil at some points.… (plus d'informations)

In the very beginning of Nice Girls, by Catherine Dang, Ivy League Mary gets expelled from Cornell when she slugs a rich, annoying freshman girl. Mary's working out her issues about being ignored and almost friendless in high school (ok, most of the book is Mary's issues with being unpopular in high school), and it's almost an understandable attack, really, when you see how insufferable that freshman is, but not a great choice for an upperclassman RA to go around attacking their residents.

From that moment on, you always know Mary has untapped rage inside her and doesn't exactly make the most responsible decisions.

Back in Mary's small town, she's working grocery checkout and tryign to figure out what happens when Ivy League Mary is expelled from the Ivy League, when the beautiful high school mean girl, now an Insta-model, disappears. I enjoyed the look at Instagram celebrity versus reality, a captivating thread in Social Creature and in Happy And You Know It, too.

The novel looks at what happens when a pretty, young Black mother and a pretty, young, white Instagram model go missing. It's here where Nice Girls shines, highlighting which girls are tragic disappearances, and which ones must be gang-related runaways.

Despite this really compelling investigation, Mary was kind of a hard character to connect with. I don't mean she was unlikable, I often enjoy a story with an over-the-top or unfriendly protag, like the horrible friends in The Hunting Party or the diagnosed psychopaths in Never Saw Me Coming. I just didn't really connect with Mary's motivations and especially her constant resentment, and that made it hard to really fall into the story. At times in this novel, it was hard to take Mary's feelings seriously because she was still so angry about being an unpopular teenager. Maybe this problem is me, maybe I'm just too old to care about who got invited to which parties in high school. But Mary's working in the grocery store with the ex-football-star-turned-cashier, so it's weird that she was still so invested in high school glory days.

Nice Girls is unfortunately super gory, but fortunately, it's very clear when that's coming. VERY CLEAR. You will know when to skip pages, and if you're at all like me, you will definitely need to skip some gross descriptions.

Overall, the questions raised by this story about who is a nice girl and who the police help were timely and engaging. The investigation had a lot of twists, which walked a fine mine of being surprising and believable, but the book was held back by my trouble connecting with (and particularly caring about) the main character.… (plus d'informations)

We all know of a few of "those girls" from High School. The pretty girl who seemingly has everything you want and her life is just perfect? Got her name? Now picture yourself 10 years down the road and she's missing. Are you helping to search for her or sitting on the couch thinking she had it coming?



Mary wasn't "that" girl, but she had been friends with her for most of her childhood before going their separate ways. But now Mary is back home after being booted from her Ivy League school and "that girl", aka Olivia, is missing.



If I'm being honest, I didn't feel as connected to Mary or any of the other characters as I think I should have been. She was a strong character, Sure, I empathized with her, but something just didn't make me love her. A brilliant mind in a dark place...The first half of the book alluded to why she was kicked out of school but once it was finally revealed, it just didn't feel all that... juicy? I think the book would have been helped if the reader know the why much sooner and could have related to Mary in regards to this...



There was a lot of thought processing throughout the book and if I hadn't been so dang curious about where Olivia was or her connection to DeMaria (the other missing girl), I probably wouldn't have finished the book. BUT, the fact that I felt I just had to know is a definite plus for Catherine Dang - great job at grabbing my curiosity and keeping me turning the pages!



And then the ending... What really happened to Olivia and DeMaria? Well, that was thrilling. It felt like watching a good thrilling movie - another kudos to Catherine! I'm not going to give away anything...



So overall, I think many people are going to love this book. I think that my feelings are probably the outcome the author was striving for even - that disconnect with Mary and the relationships surrounding her. Because, after all, they are the real winner of this book. This isn't a sick and twisted thriller if that's what you're hoping for - but it is definitely a book you'll want to absorb even if you don't understand exactly why...



Thank you William Morrow for allowing me to read this and give my honest opinion.… (plus d'informations)