Blog Tour Review: All the Good Things by Clare Fisher

All the Good Things by Clare Fisher

Published: 1st June 2017

Publisher: Penguin Viking

Pages: 228

Available in Hardback and on Kindle

Order now from Amazon

Rating: 4/5

Blurb

Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn't deserve to ever feel good again.

But her counsellor, Erika, won't give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby's head.

But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing.

What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone-even a 100% bad person-deserve a chance to be good?

Review

Twenty-one year old Bethany Mitchell is in prison for doing a bad thing. She’s given up on herself but prison therapist Erika will not. She gives Beth a notebook to write down all the good things in her life, Beth initially believes there will not be any good things as the bad thing she has done has eaten away at her. But as Beth goes back over her life she finds plenty of good things and begins to realise that maybe what she did was not completely bad and that she may not be 100% to blame.

It is pretty obvious from the start what the bad thing was that Beth did but as the story unfolds and we learn more about her it’s impossible not to feel your heart break for Beth she’s not a bad person she’s just had a bad life and has reached a point where she’s so overwhelmed she snaps.

This was a very emotional read which examines the important question of does doing a “bad thing” makes us a “bad person”. As Clare Fisher has brilliantly examined in this novel events cannot be perceived in just black or white and most human experiences are covered by a grey area which can be interpreted differently depending on circumstances.

I found Beth and her story fascinating, she has been consistently let down all her life and every time she gets a glimmer of a better life it seems to be snatched away from her just as she seems to feel happy and yet she keeps going trying to do the best she can in her lonely and poor state.

Despite this being a short novel it’s full of emotion right from the start and will probably end with you in tears. It’s not all sadness though and some of my favourite parts are when Beth works at the Odeon with Chantelle and the Chuckle Sisters when we see Beth at her best as a young girl just trying to have a little fun.

Well done to Clare Fisher for a very moving and relevant debut, I look forward to seeing what she writes next.

Thank you to Penguin Viking for sending a copy of All the Good Things and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.