[Review] All the Bad Apples - Moïra Fowley-Doyle

Summary: When Deena’s wild older sister Mandy goes missing, presumed dead, Deena refuses to believe it’s true. Especially when letters start arriving—letters from Mandy—which proclaim that their family’s blighted history is not just bad luck or bad decisions but a curse, handed down to women from generation to generation. Mandy’s gone to find the root of the curse before it’s too late for Deena. But is the curse even real? And is Mandy still alive? Deena’s desperate, cross-country search for her beloved sister—guided only by the notes that mysteriously appear at each destination, leading her to former Magdalene laundry sites and more—is a love letter to women and a heartbreaking cathartic journey. (Pub Date: Aug 27, 2019)

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Edelweiss. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Magical realism and a coming-of-age story involving a curse that haunted this family for generations until we get to our protagonist and the reason her big sister went missing.

If anyone has read The Accident Season, I'd say this is very similar in feeling. Of course, it's a whole different story, much more dark too. Moïra Fowley-Doyle probably stayed truer to herself and told the actual story she wanted instead of hiding it behind subtext.

But I'll be honest, I prefer The Accident Season. The characters—maybe because they weren't too many—were more involving there. Here we follow the generations in Deena's family to learn how the curse evolved so we get a lot of flashbacks and people getting old and dying. I'm not much of a fan of this trend (though it's been done for decades, maybe centuries) to tell two stories in different years that will eventually meet. Especially when the character in the past has obviously died.

One interesting fact is that Deena, the protagonist, is a lesbian, so part of her journey is to learn that her sexual orientation is in no way related to the curse. It's such a beautiful image that it gets spoiled when we learn at least two of her four ascendants also had lesbian tendencies. So it's genetic? I'm sure the writer just wanted to reinforce how this wasn't curse bringing up time and again, but it was forced.

And forced is how the story goes in many parts. I think it's a little of the magical realism working and also the mix of magic and reality was perfect to create the illusions and plot twists. At the same time, it wasn't the right quantity to keep my belief suspended and it made me frown as I read—even more now as I think back. So while I liked some plot twists a lot, I just went "wth" during others.

So, even though this was truer and even better written than The Accident Season, things prevented me from having the same "feels" I had then. It's still an interesting story and I love that the writer raises a discussion on workhouses and nunneries. But this isn't the book for you if you're attached to verisimilitude.

Rating: 3 out of 5.