The Good Ones by Polly Stewart, and the ways in which it annoyed me

Title: The Good Ones
Author: Polly Stewart
Publication: HarperCollins, hardcover, 2023
Genre: Suspense
Setting: Rural Virginia

Description: Lauren Ballard disappeared nearly 20 years ago, leaving a husband and six-month-old baby, after spending a carefree afternoon with Nicola Bennett. She was never found. Everyone who knew her was questioned and those close to her were traumatized by her loss. Now, Nicola’s mother has died and she returns to Tyndall County to go through her mother’s possessions and ask Lauren’s realtor husband Warren to sell the house she grew up in. Yet once Nicola is back in her hometown, she is so strongly reminded of her friend that she decides to stay and investigate her disappearance. Taking a temporary position at the high school both attended, Nicola begins to ask questions about Lauren, not realizing her obsessive curiosity could be very dangerous or that everyone in Tyndall kept secrets she never knew.

My Impression: The most surprising part of the book was when Warren’s grandmother (a Radcliffe alumna) leaves Nicola some children’s books in her will:

Mrs. Ballard had left me a bunch of old children’s books I’d never heard of: Betsy-Tacy, Elsie Dinsmore, plus a few Brontës and some paperback mysteries by Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. The Betsy-Tacy books were all right, but Elsie Dinsmore was god-awful. I read ten pages and shoved the whole box in my closet.

The bequest had nothing to do with the plot but (a) maybe a little more time with Betsy-Tacy would have improved Nicola's personality and (b) I doubt Warren and Sean Ballard’s mother wanted her son to date her mother-in-law’s cleaning lady’s daughter, even if she was a reader!

There were so many things that bothered me about this book, beginning with the unlikable protagonist. The author says it “is not a story about a murder. It’s not the story of what happened to Lauren Ballard in the early-morning hours of August 10, 2001,” so I suppose you could say it is a story about a woman who had a love-hate relationship with a charismatic older girl whose disappearance left her with unresolved guilt.  Admittedly, I read until the end; I wanted to know how it would end.  What annoyed me was that there were so many inconsistencies, unanswered questions, and just plain illogical aspects of the plot, some of which I have outlined below:

Many Spoilers:

• It is clear that Nicola both admired Lauren and resented what Lauren had: good looks, social confidence, wealth, and Warren, the boyfriend everyone wanted. Nicola would not even be Warren’s second choice so she dates his younger, less-desirable brother instead.

Back home in Tyndall, I couldn’t avoid the fact that I’d been shaped by the loss of Lauren more than I cared to admit. What choice did you have, after all, when the person who had stood at the center of your sense of self wasn’t there anymore? You grew around that damage like a tree wrapped in barbed wire. You let it bite into you. You shaped yourself to the new reality, until it was hard to tell what was you and what was the hole she’d left.

• If Nicola cared so much about her missing friend, why didn't she come home to investigate before 16+ years went by? Or tell the police everything she knew about Lauren? It is obvious that Nicola’s obsession with Lauren prevented her from establishing lasting relationships all these years. At one point in the book, it seemed plausible that Nicola had killed her and possibly blanked out any recollection.

• Lauren was the most popular girl in the school – and a social climber – and Nicola was a relatively poor teen three years younger, so their relationship (which developed out of their mothers’ also improbable friendship) never seemed very convincing to me.

• Nicola has not spent much time in her hometown since Lauren’s disappearance but she has checked Warren regularly on Facebook so knows he did not remarry. As he is a realtor, it is normal to ask him to sell her deceased mother’s house but isn’t it odd to unhesitatingly resume a close friendship with someone who might be a murderer? Let alone start sleeping with him?

• The author makes a point of Nicola finding herself as a lesbian in college, is vague about the gender of her subsequent lovers, then when she wants to sleep with her dead friend’s husband, she is bisexual – or is she just exploiting her resemblance to Lauren?

• Lauren gets annoyed when Sean, her high school boyfriend, asks if she was always into girls but it seems like a reasonable question, as is whether Nicola’s becoming a lesbian was connected to being assaulted by him?

• Among the many unlikely things that happen in this book: Sean is so weak a student that he gets turned down by eight colleges, assaults and becomes estranged from Nicola, but later gets a tattoo inspired by Jane Eyre because it was Nicola’s favorite book. I am surprised he would have even remembered such a book existed, let alone read it! When she returns to town, he has improbably become a high school principal who drives around smoking pot.

• Nicola knows and seems to resent that she was a pale, less-vibrant version of Lauren in high school but is illogically surprised that Lauren’s mother and then Warren comment on her resemblance to Lauren, accentuated by her contact lenses.

• Does Warren genuinely like Nicola or is he just sleeping with her because she resembles his wife? Does she have feelings for him from a long-ago high school crush or is she yearning for what Lauren had and didn’t value?

• Warren is somewhat exploitive/abusive to her so don’t feel sorry for him. At one point, it seems like he just wants her to help his daughter with her college applications. Then when he is annoyed with her, he simply stops communicating with her.

• Nicola also lacks manners: searching someone’s house/closets/medicine cabinets after you spend the night is also rude, let alone removing items.

• How can one start asking bordering-on-rude questions of possible killers, how does one not consider this could be dangerous? Especially when they

• If you destroyed someone’s reputation as a teenager by writing (albeit) anonymously “Slut” on her locker, is it reasonable to think confessing is a good idea?

• Nicola seems to feel more guilt for framing Lauren for the locker incident than the injury to Jessi, who dropped out of school, humiliated. Lauren lost her scholarship to UVA where Nicola imagines she might have found someone other than Warren to marry.

• Given how critical Nicola is of Lauren as high school Queen Bee and their age and social status difference, why was she so surprised not to be one of Lauren’s bridesmaids?

• Was the death of Dale Westcott, the primary suspect in Lauren’s disappearance, a suicide? His children don’t think so.

• How can Nicola think she can infiltrate an alumnae event at a school she did not attend when the organizers and attendees would know she is not listed in any college records? Also, crashing an alumnae event is bizarre behavior.  Nicola's behavior has become crazily obsessive at this point.  It would make so much more sense to confide in the police detective!

• Why do characters head to abandoned, isolated houses they think could be a crime scene in a blizzard and without a flashlight? And believe they can break in with impunity?

• If there is an online message board relating to someone’s disappearance, wouldn’t detectives occasionally investigating said disappearance check out all the group members and monitor activity? Get IP addresses if necessary?   

• Lauren’s friend Taylor says Lauren was jealous of Nicola but why? Nicola didn’t have anything Lauren wanted or needed.

• Why would Sean give Nicola a job as a substitute teacher if he wanted her to leave town?

• What was the point of Nicola finding out she was the product of rape, except to further show how unappreciative she was of her mother’s sacrifices and love? Was it only to allow Lauren’s mother to persuade Lauren not to get an abortion?   Why would Lauren tell anyone she was pregnant if she was planning to get an abortion anyway?

• If you break a bathroom mirror in a house being sold, wouldn’t the potential homeowner object during the final walk-through?

• I guess it’s possible for Nicola to be yearning for a do-over with her girlfriend Erika while she sleeping with Warren but it seems illogical given she knows Erika is happily married.

• My biggest problem with the book was that Lauren was a narcissist who craved attention and did not seem to have any sort of work ethic or experience, so is it at all plausible that she would fake her own disappearance and stay under the radar for years, given that requires keeping a low profile, moving frequently, and working entry-level jobs that barely provide the necessities of life? Getting a divorce and alimony would have given her the freedom she craved or the ability to trade up to a more affluent husband and lifestyle; plus, she would eventually have inherited whatever her mother possessed.

If you can’t believe in the characters’ behavior, how can you find a book convincing?

Source: Library. This was my twenty-sixth book for Carol’s Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge.