Book Review: All The Bad Apples by Moïra Fowley-Doyle
Media Type: Print Book (ARC)
Title: All The Bad Apples
Author: Moïra Fowley-Doyle
Publisher: Kathy Dawson Books
Pages: Hardcover; 320
Release Date: August 27, 2019
Source: Publisher / FFBC Tours
Content Screening: Mild Violence; Adult Language
HDB Rating: 5*
Recommended to: Everyone. Seriously. This book is a beautiful work of art.
Add it on: Goodreads | Amazon | B&N
The day after the funeral all our mourning clothes hung out on the line like sleeping bats. ‘This will be really embarrassing,’ I kept saying to my family, ‘when she shows up at the door in a week or two.’
When Deena’s wild and mysterious sister Mandy disappears – presumed dead – her family are heartbroken. But Mandy has always been troubled. It’s just another bad thing to happen to Deena’s family. Only Deena refuses to believe it’s true.
And then the letters start arriving. Letters from Mandy, claiming that their family’s blighted history is not just bad luck or bad decisions – but a curse, handed down through the generations. Mandy has gone in search of the curse’s roots, and now Deena must find her. What they find will heal their family’s rotten past – or rip it apart forever.
Oh my goodness, this book. I barely had an inkling of what All The Bad Apples had in store for me, and I’m actually glad for that. It made discovering this book all the more bittersweet. See, there is a deep message under all the beautiful, lyrical writing. By the time I reached the ending of this story, I was in tears. I’d honestly be surprised if you aren’t as well.
Deena lives in a world where being a “nice, normal girl” is what is expected. Raised by her older sister, judged from afar by her absent father, attending a strict Catholic school, Deena feels hemmed in. She notes the girls around her who are brave enough to stand tall, to show their true colors, but she doesn’t know how to be one of them. This is why I loved Deena, and why I’m so glad that she was our main character. She wasn’t immediately fierce, but instead her bravery grew as she went on the journey to find her missing sister. A hero’s journey, if you will. Each piece of the puzzle that fell into place, each lesson learned from her ancestors, brought her closer and closer to the person that she wanted to be. It was a beautiful, brutally honest journey, and it was just perfect.
I loved how Fowley-Doyle was able to bring in so much rich, albeit damning, history into this story. Deena’s journey is told in alternating chapters between current day Ireland, and historical Ireland. Within these chapters, the author starkly lays out the similarities between people who lived hundereds of years ago, and the girls who are involved in the modern day story. It’s terrifying how much similarity there is between the two of them. There’s a definite focus on the people considered to be on the fringes of society, or the bad apples if you will. People who dared to love outside of the “norm”. People who looked different, or acted different, or merely wanted something more than what society told them they should have. I can’t express enough how poignant all of that is. I don’t want to spoil anything, since this is something to discover, but reading the author’s note at the end broke my heart in two. I had no idea of this history before this book, and I’m so glad that it was all laid out for me in such a spectacular way.
Admittedly, you’ll need to suspend disbelief to really appreciate this story. It reads much like the fairy tales of old, where good things happen to good people and true villains are as human as the rest of us. It reads in an almost magical mannner, blurring that line between the real world and the fairy tale one that lurks underneath. I thought it was a perfect way to tell this sometimes tragic and sometimes hopeful tale. I ended with a full heart, and that’s pretty much the best explanation I can give you as to why you need to read this book.
If you’re looking for something historically based, that will enchant you and make you cry, this is your book.
FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. I was not monetarily compensated for my opinion.
