Review: For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing

BOOK STATS

Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Title: For Your Own Good
Author: Samantha Downing
Genre: Thriller
Audience: Adult
Format: Hardcover
Length: 373 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Release Date: July 20, 2021
Source: Personal collection
Recommended for fans of: dark academia

SYNOPSIS

Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the esteemed Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest.

He says his wife couldn’t be more proud—though no one has seen her in a while.

Teddy really can’t be bothered with the death of a school parent that’s looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy’s personal life. His main focus is on pushing these kids to their full academic potential.

All he wants is for his colleagues—and the endlessly meddlesome parents—to stay out of his way.

It’s really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost.

MY THOUGHTS

I love Samantha Downing’s twisty, compelling writing. She does such a great job of shocking the reader and tying everything together. I flew through this thriller in a day (which is pretty rare for me!).

This didn’t completely blow my mind the way I wanted it to, but it was still very, very good. I think part of the reason I struggled a bit with this book is because I am a teacher, but I could not at all relate to these teachers and their mindsets. Teddy deciding in the middle of class to teach a completely different novel than he had planned?? The teachers and students alike were way too obsessed with the school, which drove them to extreme actions.

The twisted characters and their desperate actions made for a very entertaining thriller about an elite private school with a slight murder problem.