When Becca changes and is unwilling or unable to tell her best friend Nora, what happened the night she called, begging Nora to come get her, the result is estrangement. No contact for three months. Then a late night text 'I love you.' Nora gives in and goes to her best friend's house but there's no sign of Becca save for her phone under a chair overlooking a murky swimming pool.
Things continue in an eerie and mysterious pattern, one that involves three additional people disappearing that same night, Nora having ever stranger dreams, and a series of flashbacks to what the two call The Goddess Games. Originally a jump rope rhyme, these have become something both sinister and powerful. In the course of decoding mysterious dreams and messages to find Becca, Nora finds herself in over her head. How she deals with this makes for an intriguing read. ( )

before my review i just wanna say i am SO lucky to have gotten this book from the library ONE DAY AFTER IT WAS RELEASED! like come on.. i have NEVER read a book that was just released. i feel like i won a prize honestly. review: this was fine.. i really think for YA this is freaking slow! i lost interest in this book at least 5 times and REALLY did not want to finish it. to me YA novels should keep your attention/interest better. BUT i thought the protagonist Nora is a great teenager! she's believable and the way she handled the struggles throughout the book made sense. and her relationship with her bestie Becca is well written and really held up with the conflict that was happening throughout the story. although this was too slow for me, once the plot got going it was creepy while not being scary in a good way. this book was just okay for me, but that doesn't mean it's not a good book for an actual teenager which is its target audience ( )

THE BAD ONES is Melissa Albert's latest novel. Known for her fantasy worlds, Ms. Albert changes things by setting this story in the un-fantastical Chicago suburbs. She doesn't abandon her roots, however, which means there is more than meets the eye as you progress through the story.

Unfortunately, THE BAD ONES is not up to the same standard as Ms. Albert's previous stories. For one, it suffers from pacing issues. The novel starts WAY too slowly; I couldn't get more than five pages before falling asleep, no matter what time I started reading. And this lasted well into the halfway mark. Once you reach that midway point, the story becomes a race to the end. There are few explanations for the supernatural element, which Ms. Albert introduces towards the last third of the novel. The rush and the last-minute introduction of something that dramatically changes the story make for an unsatisfactory reading experience.

However, I do like how Ms. Albert portrays Nora. She doesn't shy away from showing Nora's inner turmoil. Friendships are tricky, and Nora must maneuver through the emotional aftermath of a long-time friendship that abruptly ends and the guilt that ensues once Becca disappears. We see Nora hesitate to seek potential love while experiencing a loss. Because of this, we know that Nora is more vulnerable and fragile than most teens. It makes her a likable character, even if her relationships are questionable.

The main message of THE BAD ONES is one we've heard before and often. Ultimately, we know that people experience things we cannot know, and we should be mindful before criticizing them. Ms. Albert doesn't just remind us of this fact. She hits us over the head with this idea of secrets that are not just shocking but also life-changing. It not only makes you question what someone might be experiencing, but it changes how you look at other people. Because you never know.

I still love Ms. Albert and her writing even if I wasn't enamored with THE BAD ONES. More than anything else, the pacing is what makes THE BAD ONES such a disappointment. Her characters remain strong and well-developed. The plot is good, albeit it suffers from too much exposition in the first half and not enough in the second. I'm going to chalk this up to a one-off and expect good things from Ms. Albert in the future. ( )