Title: Bad Marie
Author: Marcy Dermansky
Genre: domestic thriller
PopSugar Reading Challenge Prompt: The book that’s been on your TBR list for the longest amount of time (according to my Goodreads “to read” shelf)
It’s no joke that Marie is bad. But I didn’t hate her at all. She makes some terrible decisions, but it’s pretty clear that she isn’t intending to physically harm anyone. She’s selfish more than anything. Her background was pretty rough, but that doesn’t justify her actions. But by the end of the book, I mostly felt sorry for her. She is just lost.
From Goodreads: Bad Marie is the story of Marie, tall, voluptuous, beautiful, thirty years old, and fresh from six years in prison for being an accessory to murder and armed robbery. The only job Marie can get on the outside is as a nanny for her childhood friend Ellen Kendall, an upwardly mobile Manhattan executive whose mother employed Marie’s mother as a housekeeper. After Marie moves in with Ellen, Ellen’s angelic baby Caitlin, and Ellen’s husband, a very attractive French novelist named Benoit Doniel, things get complicated, and almost before she knows what she’s doing, Marie has absconded to Paris with both Caitlin and Benoit Doniel. On the run and out of her depth, Marie will travel to distant shores and experience the highs and lows of foreign culture, lawless living, and motherhood as she figures out how to be an adult; how deeply she can love; and what it truly means to be “bad.”
When the trio escapes to Paris, the story really picks up. The entire time, Marie is taking care of Caitlin as best as she can. She’s a great “mother” for her. The one person in the entire world that she loves is this little girl who doesn’t belong to her. And that, at least, motivates her to make some better decisions. While they are on the run, Marie begins to run out of money, but luckily finds a way to get more, but that leads to more bad decisions. As impulsive as she is, she still has Caitlin’s best interest at heart, aside from keeping her from her mother, of course. This book was really compelling, and I kept reading to see what mess Marie would get into next.
Pleasant Nights 