Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

This book was good, but it wasn't. That may not be obvious since I rated it so low. Firsts tackled some tough subjects, but it didn't really do so in a great or helpful way. I honestly wonder if it may have done more harm than good. The intention of the author, much like the intention of the main character Mercedes Ayres, was probably a good one at heart, but, as the proverb goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Good intentions cannot fix what is truly wrong with this show more book.

I understand the attempt to soften the approach people take to cheating and slut-shaming, but it doesn't actually achieve that. Instead, it pushes those stereotypes even further and dismisses criminal behavior as seduction and bad parenting. Luke is portrayed as the former boyfriend, while the behavior described is clearly sexually abusive. He groomed Mercedes before forcing her to perform oral sex on him and before eventually raping her. Charlie's actions are not really any better. Filming a person having sex without their consent is illegal. Trying to physically force someone to have sex with you is illegal. Attempting to blackmail someone over their sex life is, you guessed it, illegal. But the author chooses to say that Charlie was trying to "seduce" Mercedes. No, that's not seduction. Those are acts of sexual violence. Kim is an emotionally abusive and emotionally & physically neglectful mother, and Mercedes' absentee father who decided to punish Mercedes for her mom's decisions isn't much better. Kim is portrayed as a slut and a bimbo who only cares about spending the ill-gotten gains of her ex-husband. It's the kind of storyline that you might get from websites run by "men's rights activists" and MGTOW. Faye is the supposed-to-be-subtle-but-really-isn't cautionary tale. Zach is the night-in-shining armor. Angela is the good girl, the girl with the patience of a saint and who is let back into Mercy's life too easily. Mercedes is the fallen girl/girl gone bad who takes on the sins of all those involved & is nearly ruined in the process. She is constantly obsessing over what side she should show others, which is something that a lot of people feel, but it was never really addressed in the book. Yes, there's the whole, her mom screwed up how she thinks about sex, beauty, weight, etc., but that's not enough to explain why she is so hyper-critical and why she is convinced that she is unlovable. And if you're going to spend a whole book tearing down the main character's self-esteem, then you need to spend more than a couple of pages making her act like she's all-better all of a sudden.

Sometimes it came across as preachy. No, wait, it always came across as preachy. The sex lives of most of the characters in the book are regularly criticized. Angela, Mercy's BFF, is super-religious and pushes her faith onto everyone. (There are even Bible verses that are quoted and referenced.) Her sex-negative attitude only pushes Mercy to hide her actions. Kim's antics seem to push the idea that adultery leads women to even more vice-filled lives. Mercy's internal dialogue about how many guys she's had sex with pushed the idea that girls & women who have 'too much' sex might be seen as used up goods. The outcome at school for Mercedes pushes the idea that women and girls have to be punished for being sexual.

When Mercedes describes how she feels about sex and intimacy, even when she sometimes thinks she's attracted to Faye, it's almost like reading a pamphlet on sex addiction. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed by the way that her pseudo-attraction to Faye was handled. I know that with sex addiction, a person might engage in sex with people that they aren't really attracted to, but the whole "is she going to kiss me" thing that existed through most of their interactions was just shrugged away toward the end. I didn't know if Mercedes was only thinking about Faye that way because she really doesn't understand relationship boundaries or if she might not be as heterosexual as she eventually felt the need to declare she was. Sex addiction or figuring out that you're LGBTQ might be an interesting topic to cover in a novel, but it needs to be addressed in a better way.

Come to think of it: all of the issues that are described within the book need to be addressed properly.

In attempting to counter the sex-negativity that people, especially women and girls, encounter in their lives, the book actually pushed an even more sex-negative outlook. The book essentially normalized sexual violence, parental neglect, and shaming young women for being interested in sex. That's why I don't think I could ever truly love this book. It almost seemed like a book I could like until it became clear that it was just another in a long line of anti-sex books with ambiguous attitudes toward abuse and sexual assault. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. show less

This was a very insightful read into a topic that is rarely discussed, much less in YA lit. Now, I've said before I don't like stories about cheating, or romance, or sex, but the exploration and ownership of sexuality by teenage girls discussed in Firsts is an important one.

While I do not agree with the actions Mercedes takes throughout the novel, it's written in a way that I just couldn't hate her for what she did. She sleeps with many, many, boys, all of whom have girlfriends. It's awful. show more Mercedes justifies it in her own way, thinking she's helping the boys. The novel does call it out as cheating eventually. You know that there's going to be a huge fallout. Though I believe that Mercedes deserved some amount of it, I also felt bad for her.

And yet - it's a coping mechanism, and it unfolds throughout the story to show sex as Mercedes' way of coping with a rape and subsequent pregnancy as it gives her the feeling of control - or, hypersexuality as a medical condition. It's destructive and awful to read about, but it's eye-opening. Her character development is good but a bit abrupt at the end, as everything seems to be solved as she comes to the realization that she's losing control over herself. People forgive her too easily, especially Zach.

Though I generally liked how the issues in this novel was discussed, I'm a bit disappointed that rape and sexual assault wasn't discussed directly, because there were a lot of situations that warranted a discussion of it. It would have added that much more to the topics Firsts was attempting to explore. show less

Holy hell, “I can’t remember the last time I felt this much,” has never been more real. Three girls, the center of the universe, all with something the others want, are like hungry monsters circling their prey. The adage ‘sticks and stones may break my bones’ but words might actually kill me is relevant in Flynn’s haunting story of toxic friends who will do anything for attention; bully, manipulate, and dismantle a person until there’s nothing left.
Flynn’s debut novel is show more truly outstanding. I was drawn in, shocked and horrified, all while recognizing the unhealthy dynamics in so many female friendships that are represented here. There’s nothing off the table when “achieving that level of deceit in the name of sisterhood.” Themes of bad influences, peer pressure, rape, murder, suicide and loyalty intermingle into the smoke surrounding this fire of mystery.
Flynn’s use of the written word is intoxicating- I don’t think I’ve highlighted so many phrases, intelligent pieces of the English language that she’s strewn together, in any other book I’ve read. I’m infatuated with her writing and cannot stop thinking about the wickedness and humanity that lie within these pages.
The Girls Are All So Nice Here will turn you inside out, and you will not recover anytime soon.
*I received an arc from the publisher through NetGalley for an honest review show less

I got this book via Netgalley in exchange for a review.

3.5 stars but I'm rounding up because I think a lot of the things I disliked about this were personal preference things and not necessarily the books fault. This is a dark book so I'm putting some trigger warnings in the spoiler tag at the very end of this review.

To start with what I liked, the setting of this book is really strong. It has two timelines and the one in the past is set at Wesleyan and that part was very well written. It show more really sucked me and really made reading the more gruesome parts of this book difficult. I could vividly picture everything and while this story was incredibly dissimilar to my own freshman year experience, it all felt very grounded. Like every character in this book was such a stereotypical WASPy person at small college in Connecticut, with names like Ambrosia, Flora, Sloane, and others. This could have made the world seem flat but I think it really added to the setting by really driving home what kind of world these characters are in.

I also thought the character building was excellent. These main characters are not people I think you're supposed to like and I did not. I think this book does a good job presenting the reader with scenarios and having the reader figure out what they think about some action while still presenting the events of the book as horrifying overall. The thing I would have liked to see a bit more of was some other sides to some characters but especially Sully and Amb. Though there was a couple of times I felt some sympathy for Amb, such as the different feeling she had with her husband when it came to children, most of the time, I just didn't like her. I don't think there's anything wrong with having purely unlikable characters and that can be really interesting. I think it was interesting to read in this book and this seemed more like a fall from grace story where the characters get less and less sympathetic but I think if I had liked Amb more when she started college, that decline would have been more impactful.

There were a few things I didn't like. I just generally do not enjoy mysteries with a dual timeline. This one had both a present and a past timeline. The big event happened in the past and the characters in the future reflect on it and the past chapters slowly lead up to what happens. This isn't a bad format, I just don't like it. My other problem with that timeline is this book is written in the first person so it always breaks immersion for me because it's hard for me to really feel like I'm in that characters head when they're actively not thinking about the big thing that happened. I saw a different reviewer once say that you can't keep secrets in first person and I think that's true. I also wasn't completely satisfied with the ending. Poppy, Flora's sister, sets Amb up to go to prison for killing Sully and I just didn't like that as an ending because Poppy is barely in this book up until that moment and I just don't like that when I'm reading a mystery.

This is this authors debut book and I think she did a really good job the first time out. This book is genuinely upsetting at parts and I think the author finds the balance of tension and release pretty well in this story. I look forward to seeing what this author does next.

Content Warnings
There is a rape in this book, drug use, and a graphic description of suicide, and I do mean graphic. I can usually read those sorts of scenes but I had to skim this one show less