It took me a while to get into this novel but about half-way through I was gripped and could not put it down. It's about a girl in her late teens, Lily, who we witness behaving in an overly protective and attentive way towards her mother. The claustrophobic and toxic family atmosphere is brilliantly evoked by the writing and the dark subjects of trauma and abuse are sensitively yet powerfully portrayed. A very touching novel.

Wow. The novel deals with abuse and I have to admit to being affected by it. However, that just speaks volumes about how well it was written. I don't see this book as a thriller but one that deals with the mental torture of abusive relationships in families and the devastating impact on those people. I read most of the book in one sitting and that is rare for me. Brilliantly written. Emotional. Heart wrenching.

This is not a pleasant story. It is a family imploding and exploding. Dysfunctional is an understatement and the story told around them is brutal.
So, we have Lily, our MC, who has just finished school and is looking forward to starting at Oxford in the autumn to study Law. She has a brother and sister who have already left home to start their own families, a mostly absent (emotionally as well as physically distant) father and overbearing, bullying mother Mae. Lily spends most of her time in her attic bolthole, escaping only to do the bidding of said demanding mother. Lily being her favourite and, well, only one left at home to do it! The bidding including some rather powerful control. Lily herself is subservient to her mother and also the go-between for her siblings who all demonstrate their own dysfunctions. It really is a bonkers family all told...
And it's a hard hitting story. Brutal as I have already described it. But there are pockets of joy to be found within the pages which prevents the whole thing from descending too far into darkness. That said, I did have to take several steps back whilst reading the book to stop myself getting dragged down too much.
That said, it was a compelling read that felt credible and real all the way through which made it even more hard hitting for me. I can't say I enjoyed it, what with the subject matter, and it was somewhat disturbing. But there was that light, that hope, and that's what I read on for...
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I'm sorry to say I could not finish this .
I didn't like any of the characters ( don't even ask about Mama ) and that put me off from finding out how the story panned out .
I can see rave reviews for this -so maybe it's just not my genre

Thankyou NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review

An excellent debut. Twsty, tense, cruel and compelling. Some proper jaw dropping moments to keep you reading!

‘Bad Fruit’ is an unusual, often unsettling, but always enriching read. The protagonist is seventeen-year-old Lily, who grows up in Greenwich and negotiates British culture with her British-Singaporean heritage. Lily is the peacemaker between her subservient father and her volatile mother. In her final summer before going up to Oxford, Lily begins to suffer from hallucinations that are partly hers, partly her mother’s, and the true extent of their symbiotic relationship and the full extent of the intergenerational trauma that underpins her family becomes clear. How Lily negotiates this makes for a deeply disturbing but essential read by a fresh new voice in British fiction.Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the free ARC that I received in exchange for this honest and unbiased review.

This book really makes you think about the fact you have no idea what’s going on behind closed doors or what’s happened in people’s pasts. Lily was a character that went through such growth and development, she had me rooting for her from day one. It is such a difficult subject to write a novel on without it becoming depressing but the author did a good job in their approach!

A compelling and somewhat unsettling book exploring complex family relationships. Lots of secrets and lies, trauma, toxic characters and an all round fantastic read.

Bad Fruit is one of those books which stands out and stays in your head for a very long time. I would not say I ‘enjoyed’ reading it, but I did find it compelling, sinister and difficult to put down.

Our main character is Lily, a girl who is obedient and attentive to ‘Mama’ and ‘Daddy’ whom she lives with before she heads off to University at the end of the summer. Her mother is controlling and manipulative, getting her daughter to change her appearance (with hair dye, contact lenses and makeup) to appear a certain way and even going as far to make Lily taste her preferred spoilt orange juice for her each morning. We see the whole story through Lily’s eyes although when she starts to get flashbacks of her mother’s past we grow doubts about how reliable Lily is as a narrator and also how truthful Mama is being with her past.

Bad Fruit is quite a slow burn, but it keeps you hooked throughout and the sense of unease is compelling. I could not put it down in places hoping for a good outcome for Lily. The characters, although cruel felt well-rounded and fleshed out and the book felt realistic in its portrayal of cruelty.

Overall Bad Fruit is not an enjoyable read but it is an engaging one - a toxic tale that will keep you hooked. Thank you to NetGalley & HarperCollins UK – Harper Fiction for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

‘Bad Fruit’ By Ella King
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Take a bow, Ella King! This novel was an astonishingly intriguing and harrowing depiction of familial relationships. The toxicity of certain characters was repugnant, yet relentlessly engaging (and, at times) difficult to read.

The depth of the Singaporean culture was fascinating- I found myself learning lots about food and traditional practices.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins for the eARC.

I loved this dark and captivating novel with the toxic mother/daughter relationship at its centre. Lily's almost hallucinatory recall of someone else's memories was so beautifully done, and I loved the contrast of the richly observed Singapore with Lily's own middling life in a London suburb.

In their own ways, each of the characters was appalling, but I liked that the novel drew all the threads together, proving ultimately redemptive.

A complex and compelling story, beautifully managed.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for providing me with a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Lily is the youngest of 3 children in a very dysfunctional family. As an outsider you would think her life was perfect but this is far from the truth as she plays peacekeeper to her extremely volatile mother.
This complex pyschological family thriller had me gripped from the start and I ploughed through it quickly to see how the turbulent lives of the main characters would develop. I would highly recommend.

Lily is all too aware of her mother’s rage and does whatever she can to prevent it from showing up each evening – from serving up her favourite beverage (my stomach turns at the thought of it) to arranging the teddy bears on her mother’s bed. But as her mother unravels, Lily finds she’s on a similar path and reframe her life for what it may be, not what she hoped it was. If fruit can go bad, this shows that families and family relationships can go in the same direction.

When the core has been rotten, how long does it takes for the signs to come up to the surface?
A riveting read of altered family dynamics and unravelling of it, it shows how a manipulative leading figure can bring chaos, repressive trauma in a family that can lead to the breaking apart of it.
Truly an immersive read and flat out, weird.

Thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for an arc of Bad Fruit in exchange for my honest opinion.
Bad Fruit is a complex book that makes for compulsive reading. It's a psychological thriller that explores a toxic mother-daughter relationship. Lily is 17, on the verge of attending Oxford. At home Lily keeps the peace between her Singaporean mama Mae, her father and her siblings. As the book progresses and truths emerge about mama's cruelty and nasty behaviour towards her family it can be emotional and sometimes shocking, but it still keeps you hooked to read on to the end. A fantastically dark and disturbing debut novel from Ella King, an author I will look forward to reading more from in the future.

Ella King’s novel, Bad Fruit, is a study in the dynamics of familial relationships. Central to the novel is the mother figure who manipulates and controls the lives of those around her which is heavily influenced by her own tragic and abusive past which she has managed to block out for many years.

The apple never falls far from the tree - but what happens if the fruit is bad?

Lily has always been frightened. Stuck between her family. Following her mothers every whim to make sure she doesn't get angry, that she loves her. But now, she is facing the change to leave the place she has always called home for University and comes to realise this might not be home. And she might not really be the bad fruit in her family.

Vividly disturbing and uncomfortable, this dark domestic thriller explores the dangers of complex family relationships that can be hiding behind a perfect picket fence life. The setting was suffocating, we feel the coercion and control mama has on Lily, her little doll and learn with Lily as she flashes back throughout her life to try and find who they really are.

Compelling, compulsive and unsettling.

Loved this book from the outset. Lily has an idyllic life - on the surface. Dig deeper and the relationship with her whole family begins to unravel.
Who is really the Bad Fruit?
This book contains gut-wrenching, heart-breaking moments and frankly weird moments as this whole family falls apart.
Enthralling.

the premise was interesting and the novel started off strong. it hooked me from the very first line and i was so intrigued by the story that i read the first act in one sitting. the writing was good, too, and the story was executed well.

so why the 2 star rating? well, i fell asleep not once— not twice! — but three times while reading this book. it got boring after the first act — the constant hallucinations felt repetitive and it made the plot stagnant. i personally thought that it was disruptive to the momentum of the story as there was no forward movement nor further development to the story. the uninteresting reenactments and dry flashbacks interrupted the atmosphere and always took me out of the story. i could not be immersed into the story nor could i connect with the characters because of it.

true that the mother-daughter relationship was nuanced, as were the main character's other relationships, and the author excels at writing the duality and complexity of their dynamics. yet, it still did not pull me into the story. i was not invested at all, which was probably why i was able to fall asleep three times. really, i don't have anything particularly bad to say about the book because i was simply bored. it just didn't do it for me.

i must say though that it does deserve the good reviews, because the author knows what and how to write, which is a rare skill these days. King is indeed an author whose works should be anticipated by everyone. i will look forward to her future works even though this novel was not for me.

Eighteen year old Lily is waiting to go to Oxford, to escape the cloying relationship she has with her mother. Her mother, Mai, is from Singapore and wants mixed race Lily to be just like her. She dyes Lily's hair black, makes her wear contact lenses and forces her to wear makeup unsuitable for her skin tone. All to make her look more Chinese. The family is unbearably dysfunctional, Lily's sister says and does outrageous things to madden her mother, her father is half in love with his daughter-in-law and her brother is traumatised by their mother's behaviour. When Lily starts to have flashbacks she at first thinks that they are of things that happened to her but then realises they happened to her mother. Are they enough to explain Mai's abusive behaviour.

I found this a very difficult book to read because of the abuse in it. I think it would be triggering for anyone who had suffered abuse of any kind. It's well written but I have to say I did not enjoy reading it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.