Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

Beautiful Bad is a psychological thriller that will keep you turning pages until the surprising end. Every time I thought that I had something figured out, I would find out in a few pages that I was totally wrong so the ending was a huge surprise but one that made total sense based on the clues that were scattered throughout. The book starts out with a murder - a bloody and gruesome murder and a 911 call to the police - but we don't learn who was murdered until much later in the book and we don't know WHY they were murdered until the very end.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

March 2019; Park Row; 978-0778369103
audio, ebook, print (368 pages); thriller

Maddie and Ian meet overseas in a war-torn area of the world. Maddie was teaching and writing a travel book and Ian was a bodyguard at the British Embassy. They met by chance at a party that Maddie went to with her best friend Jo who was an aid worker. Ten years later, Maddie and Ian are married and have a young son and live in America. Maddie and Jo are no longer friends which was another mystery to be solved. Maddie had fallen on a camping trip several weeks before the murder and the fall may have caused some brain damage so she was working with a psychologist using writing therapy. As Maddie tries to piece her life together and remember the fall, there are clues that it wasn't really a fall but that Ian had hurt her and the reader begins to wonder how happy their marriage really is. Ian is gone overseas all the time and Maddie is left in the States to take care of their son and their home. Was she happy with her life? Was Ian happy? How happy was their marriage? All these questions will be answered by the end of this fantastic book.

This exciting new book will grab readers from page 1 when a murder takes place and the central questions are WHO and WHY? It kept me reading quickly to find out the answers to those questions and to decide who in the story was really telling the truth. This is a novel about love and friendships - secrets and lies!

Buy Beautiful Bad at Amazon

About the Author:

After film school, Annie moved to Eastern Europe to work for Fodor Travel Guides, covering regions of Spain and Bulgaria. She remained in Bulgaria for five years spanning a civilian uprising and government overthrow. The novel THE MAKING OF JUNE, which Annie wrote with the Bulgarian revolution and Balkan crisis as its backdrop was sold to Penguin Putnam and published to critical acclaim in 2002.

During Annie’s five years in the Balkans she received a Fulbright Scholarship, taught at the University of Sofia, and script doctored eight screenplays for Nu-Image, an Israeli/American film company that produced a number of projects in Bulgaria for the SyFy Channel. She was later the recipient of an Escape to Create artist residency.

She lives in Kansas City, Kansas with her family.

Connect with Annie
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

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Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina when she isn't traveling. She and her husband enjoy traveling, gardening and spending time with their family and friends. She reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction, and thrillers. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook, Goodreads, or Twitter. 

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