I recently finished the novel The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn. It is a mystery thriller that delves into the past and present of our protagonist (if she can truly be considered one), Ambrosia Wellington. The story alternates between Ambrosia's freshman year of college and her current 10-year college reunion, where she desperately tries to piece together the haunting choices of her past...
Warning: this review will contain spoilers, as well as many triggering topics!
The story introduces us to 29-year-old Ambrosia Wellington, who presently lives with her husband in their apartment, in New York. She has been greeted with yet another email reminding her of her 10-year college reunion that is approaching, along with a handwritten note in the mail from an anonymous source...
"You need to come. We need to talk about what we did that night."
Ambrosia begins to reminisce on her freshman year of college, truly a story for the ages (sarcasm...). It is your typical, run of the mill tale: an insecure 18-year-old girl is left to her own devices on college campus, has no idea of her own identity, and becomes influenced by the mean girl. In this case, her name is Sloane Sullivan (but everyone calls her Sully). Together, the two girls wreck chaos upon the campus... and that "chaos" is just going to parties, getting drunk/high, having promiscuous sex with as many guys as possible... Once again, very generic story!
The story progresses, eventually coming to focus on Ambrosia's jealousy for her roommate, Flora Banning. Flora could be considered an angel archetype -- a character who can do no wrong. She's beautiful, radiates warmth and positivity, gets good grades, has a sharp head on her shoulders -- and of course, the perfect boyfriend, whom Ambrosia also becomes increasingly jealous over. Ambrosia suddenly develops this sick notion that Flora doesn't deserve to have such a wonderful boyfriend; she does!
"Anger was a ball in my stomach, big and hot. Flora thought the world owed her a Kevin, which was why she didn't deserve him."
Ambrosia and Sully begin to connive together, coming up with ways to breakup Flora and her boyfriend so that Ambrosia can happily move into the picture. They ultimately decide to get Flora drunk on Halloween, take her to a party, and get her to cheat on her boyfriend with some random partygoer. The two girls steal her boyfriend's cellphone to send Flora disgusting messages under his name.
"'You don't mean that,' Flora typed. 'Please come, we can talk. I want to kill myself right now.'
My first thought: we've gone too far.
My second thought: we could go further."
Ambrosia tells Flora to kill herself; and she does.
Bringing us to present day! Ambrosia basically spends the entire weekend of her college reunion trying to figure out who is potentially trying to blackmail her, because although a police investigation was made into Flora's death, neither Ambrosia or Sully were ever apprehended for it. Ambrosia eventually comes to the realization that, although Flora had wanted to die, she hadn't gone through with killing herself -- Sully murdered her.
"I didn't have my room key, because Sully did. ... Flora didn't want to kill herself. ...
Sully hadn't convinced Flora to cut her wrists.
She did it herself."
Ambrosia also discovers that she is pregnant during this college reunion -- what perfect timing! However, her husband has had enough of the lies (he has had no idea that any of this has been going on, let alone that his wife is partially responsible for her old roommate's death), and leaves right then and there.
Also perfect timing for the blackmailer's identity to finally be revealed: it was Poppy Banning, Flora's younger sister! She corners Ambrosia in her room, only for Sully to suddenly walk into the confrontation as well -- what luck! The two women reveal the truth: that Ambrosia had told Flora to kill herself, and that Sully had actually killed her. Poppy then stabs Sully with a knife!
"The knife quakes in her hand. Now Poppy is coming to give me the same wound. But Poppy wipes the handle on her dress and hands me the knife instead. I take it.
Then she screams."
Everyone walks in to discover that Ambrosia has murdered Sully, with Poppy as their witness.
The story ends with Sully succumbing to her wound and passing away, and Ambrosia Wellington serving life in prison for one count of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. She also gives birth to a daughter, Jane, who is being taken care of "on the outside" of prison, by her now ex-husband and Poppy Banning. That's right -- Poppy was That Bitch™!
My review for The Girls Are All So Nice Here....
I hated it!
This book is the definition of a guilty pleasure, a trash novel, and the only reason I read it from start to finish is because after making it halfway through, I had to find out who the blackmailer was! (And even upon finding out their identity, I wasn't like, blown away lol).
It was your typical college smut with an element of murder thrown into it. Ambrosia's entire identity became about sex, and to be frank, it was quite disgusting how she had such a cavalier attitude about it: swinging from guy to guy, no emotional connection, no one bothering to remember anyone's name... Like, I get it, I went through my "slutty" phase as well, I had a Tinder account lol. But even during that phase, I was mainly only going through with it because my best friend at the time was encouraging me to, because societally "everyone else was doing it." I only had to try it a few times to realize that lifestyle was not for me. It left me empty, depressed, and unfulfilled. I wish the novel could have touched on that aspect a little bit, that not every girl needs to become a slut in order to truly find her self-worth.
I don't understand how the author was able to come up with an antagonist who had the life experience that Ambrosia had. Here is a girl who had been cheated on, knew what it felt like to be cheated on, then she deliberately went out of her way to become the cheater? What, just because she wasn't in a relationship, she wasn't as much of a cheater? It wasn't even like she was a girl who was dealing with her appearance -- she could obviously get any guy that she wanted (to sleep with, anyway).
There is one thing that I can praise the novel for, and that is its portrayal of the female sex; did a superb job there! Every woman was a conniving, backstabbing, two-faced bitch! But seriously folks! aside from that, it showed how women are ultimately unsatisfied with everything they are given, how they never seem to know what they truly want, let alone need. Again, here was Ambrosia, a girl who believed Flora didn't "deserve" her boyfriend... yet, Ambrosia did? And she tried justifying her reward with "I've been hurt and cheated on," even though she ultimately went on to cheat and hurt a bunch of people??? Ambrosia ultimately killed a girl simply because she was unsatisifed with her life and ashamed of her personality.
“Maybe that’s why I hated her -- not because she had who I wanted but because she had what I wanted, qualities I could never embody when I tried. Because she was nice, and that was its own power.”
It is a phemonema that I have dealt with ever since I was born (because I was born female, unfortunately!). So many suppressed emotions, relationships tinged with jealousy, simply because women want what I have, want to be who I am. Even my own sister refuses to have a relationship with me because she's jealous I'm capable of creating children and she currently isn't able to. Not that she can't! All she has to do is lose some weight, improve her diet, give it some time, and she would more than likely be capable of becoming pregnant. But it's easier to be miserable and hate the people you love for the life you don't have.
Typical women!
And just a quick disclaimer: obviously everything written in this review is of my own opinion and will contain my personal bias. It is not only my life experiences that has given me this perspective of women, but also for my observations of them as a collective in society, all throughout history, and because -- I am one 😅 If anything is taken personally, change the shoe as opposed to wearing it!
