"A Very Bad Thing" Review

A Very Bad Thing by JT Ellison

Amazon First Reads October 2024

Pages: 474 Genre: mystery, thriller

Rating: 3 Star

Kindle Highlights

Columbia Jones is the queen of literature, with her latest book accompanying a movie deal that will be huge. She's at the top, and everyone adores her. Until one night, at the last night of her book tour, she sees someone that makes her pass out on stage. And when everyone wakes up the next morning, she's found dead in her hotel room. Her death shocks the world, especially her publicist and daughter, Darian. She knows there was foul play, as do the reporter who's been tailing her mother and the grumpy detective. But with new discoveries coming out about Columbia every day, it seems like no one really knew the author the way they thought they did. How many lives will be disrupted before they can figure out what happened to Columbia Jones?

Despite this books flaws, I really did enjoy it. It was a fun book, and the characters were engaging enough that I cared about finishing to find out what happened. However, I do think this book would've benefitted from being a bit shorter and more streamlined.

As a mystery, A Very Bad Thing wasn't very good. I knew what was going on from the beginning. There were two big twists; one I called early on, and the other was confusing and weird (and I also called early on, to be clear). At a certain point, the book just turned into the reader watching each POV — of which there were many — rush to catch up with each other. Characters were just deciding things were true without evidence. There were also some times where Character A would learn something with proof, and then Character B would have to learn the same thing, but because they don't have any proof, their speculation was just treated as fact. This made the whole investigation muddled, and often left me confused about what actual evidence had been revealed.

The women were also written very weirdly. I don't want to spoil what is apparently a large plot point, but there's a whole question about whether or not a man can rape his wife, and far too many characters seem to be up in the air about that. Even though the author seemed to come to the correct conclusion — a resounding yes, obviously — it was really uncomfortable to see almost every character treat that as a valid way to question the wife's credibility. It also never actually went anywhere, so the whole victim-blaming subplot was really just unnecessary.

Additionally, almost every female character had her body weirdly remarked on by someone, usually another woman. All of them were described based on their attractiveness and their weight, which was just uncomfortable. Riley (the reporter) also has a whole thing about being celiac, which means she apparently can't eat anything. I'm sympathetic to the idea that finding truly gluten-free foods can be difficult, but she just wouldn't eat for long stretches of time, and the weight loss that resulted from that was treated as a good thing. Like, unfortunately we've left the world of celiac disease and entered the world of casual eating disorders for women. There needed to be some major edits in regards to all the women in this book.

Ultimately, A Very Bad Thing was just way more complicated than it needed to be. There weren't actually that many moving parts, but the story was told in such a roundabout and convoluted way that it seemed bigger than it actually was. There was so much buildup for what ended up being a lackluster climax/reveal (because we already knew everything), and the epilogue was just silly.

This book could've been really good, but the author needs to learn to be okay with leaving some stuff in the first draft.