Such Good People Book Review

Full disclosure: I was given a free advance reader copy of this book by Sparkpoint Studio in exchange for an honest review.

In all my years of reviewing books, there’s one storyline that I’ve never talked about: the bad-things-happen-to-good-people plot. It’s exactly what readers think it is. These kinds of tales can be predictable in their story beats and outcome. However, if the characters and their situations are compelling enough, then readers will remain interested in seeing how it unfolds. Today’s novel Such Good People by Amy Blumenfeld does this kind of story well, especially with the environments and characters, even though the ending felt rushed.

Such Good People is about the ripple effect of a split-second decision to save a friend. On a Thursday night during her spring semester of her freshman year of college, April is standing at the back of a Manhattan bar, waiting for her friend Rudy to arrive. Their eyes lock when he arrives. In a moment, lives are changed forever. Within hours, Rudy is arrested. Within days, April is expelled. Within weeks, he’s put in prison. Within months, she meets Peter, a prodigious young lawyer who makes her world whole again. About 15 years later, April is married to Peter, has three children, and works a fulfilling career. On the eve of Peter’s election to local office, Rudy is up for parole. Headlines about April’s past explode and jeopardize Peter’s campaign and everything they hold dear. She is faced with an impossible task: protect the life she created, or the person who sacrificed everything to make that life possible. 

I love how Blumenfeld describes the environments in this story. I could imagine the townhouse April and her parents lived in Brooklyn as small, but warm with red walls. This is easily why Rudy always feels welcomed and develops his relationship with that family, and it sharply contrasts with the prison he’s in. Additionally, the condo where April, Peter, and their kids live is painted as white and overlooks the Chicago skyline. It’s a far cry from where she grew up with how prestigious and delicate it is, but it’s still a loving place. Also, it reflects the precarious nature of their stances, especially with Rudy’s situation.

The author’s also fantastic with character development. I love how she takes her time in establishing the relationship between April and Rudy as well as their families. It helped to show how much each means to the other. In addition, each character has their own blurred lines when it comes to the inciting incident. Rudy may or may not have done some things, and the same goes with April. Certain readers might yell at the latter for her actions, yet I understood where she was coming from even though I didn’t agree with them at all. Even April and Peter’s marriage is jeopardized because of the incident. Plus, there’s even a bit of a redemptive arc for one of the supporting characters, which was nice to see. It all made me excited and nervous to see how everything was going to get resolved.

The issue that holds it back from being truly great is how rushed the ending was. It had a beautiful setup, especially how the flashback is fleshed out during the first half of the novel, and it continues to build until the climax. I wanted to know what was going to happen, and then, the finale was a thud. Everything in the third act was resolved fairly quickly. I was particularly curious to know more about how Rudy was able to readjust after being in prison for so long and how he was going to move from April. Instead, things happened in a way that made me say, “Oh. Ok.”

I wanted Blumenfeld to flesh out the end in the same way she did for the first two acts. It may have resulted in a longer book, but it would have been more satisfying.

Such Good People by Amy Blumenfeld is a really good novel about the grey area surrounding the crime supposedly committed. The author takes plenty of time establishing locations and three-dimensional characters who try to be such good people despite the circumstances. Unfortunately, the ending felt like it needed to resolve everything all at once instead of letting it unfold naturally. Despite that problem, I would recommend it to readers who like books about injustice and morally grey characters like Atonement by Ian McEwan and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Such Good People comes out tomorrow, July 8, so grab it wherever you get your books.

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