A Good Idea - Cristina Moracho (Review)

A Good Idea by Cristina Moracho 
Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Mystery
Publication date: February 28, 2017
Publisher: Listening Library
Format: Audiobook, 10 hours and 54 minutes
How I got it: My public library
Buy it: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
My rating: 4/5 

Fin and Betty’s close friendship survived Fin’s ninth-grade move from their coastal Maine town to Manhattan. Calls, letters, and summer visits continued to bind them together, and in the fall of their senior year, they both applied to NYU, planning to reunite for good as roommates.

Then Betty disappears. Her ex-boyfriend Calder admits to drowning her, but his confession is thrown out, and soon the entire town believes he was coerced and Betty has simply run away. Fin knows the truth, and she returns to Williston for one final summer, determined to get justice for her friend, even if it means putting her loved ones—and herself—at risk.

But Williston is a town full of secrets, where a delicate framework holds everything together, and Fin is not the only one with an agenda. How much is she willing to damage to get her revenge and learn the truth about Betty’s disappearance, which is more complicated than she ever imagined—and infinitely more devastating?

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My thoughts:

This book contains topics that might be triggers.  There is a large amount of drug use, sexual contact, binge drinking, and depression in the book.  Also, this book deals with mostly just graduated seniors before college so a younger age group.

This book starts up with Fin returning to her father’s house from Manhattan after her best friend Betty had disappeared during their senior year.  We jump into the story right as Fin is sitting at graduation awaiting Betty’s name to be mentioned and when it isn’t you can see the emotions come right off Fin.  Fin has decided she will figure out what happened to Betty while she is town and needs this to get closure.  Fin believes Betty has been killed and is not missing.

Fin has a somewhat of a boyfriend named Owen when she is in town.  Owen runs his family dinner and is the town drug dealer.  The relationship between Fin and Owen is interesting they seem to not be friends outside of the time she spends in time and, they appear to be close at the same time.  The way the relationship turns out is an interesting listen.

The book went into a lot of details of how people felt regarding Betty’s disappearance.   We get to see how each character felt about what happened to Betty and how afterwards they thought why didn’t they try to stop her.  It takes a hard look at actions and reactions.    Everyone got to take a good reflection about what they may have missed or how they could have stopped Betty.

Serena was another character that joined the mix in helping to bring justice for Betty.  Serena comes off to me immediately as if she is hiding something.  I am not sure why, but it might be how she is introduced that comes off as shady and something is off.  I did enjoy how the relationship between Serena and Fin came together.

My biggest complaint was the ending of this book.  I listened to the audio of the book and it appears the climax ends with about an hour left in the audio.  The last hour is dedicated to tying up all the loose ends as possible.  I felt like it was almost too neatly tied up.  I could have left with more vagueness of what happened to everyone, but the author took the time to explain what happened in detail after the climax.  

I would suggest reading this book over the weekend or when you have a longer time to read.  The book had a lot of parts that I couldn’t stop listening to and I ended up binge listening to the book in one day at work.   It was hard for me to stop listening because you could tell the book was building and building up for something big to happen. 

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About the Author

Cristina Moracho is a novelist and freelance writer/editor. Her debut novel, Althea & Oliver (Viking), will be published this October. She lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where she makes all the bad decisions.

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