Trigger warnings:-emotional /verbal and physical abuse, Self harm.

Lily is the youngest child of 3, She still lives with her Mama and Daddy and the others have moved out. Lily is Mama's favourite and spends the whole time looking after and managing her very volatile mood swings. She is the only one to follow in Mamas footsteps and has gained a place at Oxford university later in the year.

As Mamas erratic behaviour spirals, Lily begins to question herself, is she becoming her mother? The flashbacks are coming thick and fast....why is Lily seeing snippets of her mothers traumatic past?

This book is utterly unputdownable! It is uncomfortable and foreboding, The pacing of this book is great and with how its written, we are right there with Lily piecing together the clues of the jigsaw that is her broken life.
For me to enjoy psychological thrillers, I need some sense of resolution at the end of the book and this didn't disappoint!

Such a cleverly written, gripping story. A masterpiece! I look forward to reading more books by Ella King in the future.

🍊Bad Fruit by Ella King🍊
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

18-year-old Lily has always been her mother May’s favourite, “Mama’s doll”. Lily knows precisely how to calm Mama when she’s in a rage; she arranges her teddy bears, lays out her best lingerie and pours her a glass of perfect orange juice; orange juice as complicatedly bitter and spoiled as the family relationships within this novel.

Unlike her more feisty sister, Julia, and anxious lawyer brother, Jacob, Lily sticks steadfastly to her mother’s almost tyrannical demands, even dyeing her hair dark and wearing colour contacts to appear more Chinese (May is Chinese Peranakan, and her husband is White).

But Lily is preparing to enter Oxford in the autumn and subsists herself on the faith that she must endure only a few weeks more of her mother’s chaos before escaping. But after May accuses Lily’s father of harbouring a secret love for Jacob’s ex-wife, Francie, her unpredictability only accelerates, putting in motion a string of dramatic family showdowns, public confrontations, and other crises.

Simultaneously, Lily contends with increasingly frequent flashbacks, which she suspects may offer clues to her mother’s tragedy-riddled childhood in Singapore.

Bad Fruit fizzes with tension being so vivid in its depiction of the twisted mother-daughter relationship that it can’t fail to get under your skin. But beneath the chilling surface, it also conveys the deeply human insecurities in the toxic trappings of family trauma.

A DNF I AM AFRAID
I ploughed about half way through this, but I really couldn’t connect with the characters.

Wow. This book was gives us a disturbing insight into a wholly dysfunctional family and the relationships that play out within it. The characters and their behaviours are heartbreakingly credible as we learn about the family’s history through Lily’s flashbacks. Utterly engrossing and sometimes horrific, this is a novel that will stay with me for a long time to come.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC.

This book follows Lily, a teenager about to enter college and her relationship with her abusive mother and how it has affected her bond with her siblings. It discusses generations and generations of trauma, domestic abuse, dysfunctional family dynamics, SA, mother-daughter-sibling relationships, trust, loneliness, self discovery, and hope.

Reading this book I felt a range of emotions, mostly rage, fear, grief, and hope. The way King portrays the mother, May, a deeply flawed woman with childhood trauma who continues to inflict pain and suffering on her children based on her own past experiences was raw and real. May is a monster; the constant need to be in control and in turn forcing Lily to be someone she’s not by physically altering her complexion, continuously manipulating and gaslighting her children, and whenever they stop being the ideal version she has created abusing them in various forms of torture, was conveyed as it was. There was a quote from one of the characters, Lewis, which points out that even though May was a victim of abuse and assault it doesn’t excuse her actions in her adult years and I found it to be brilliant.

<i> “After the child becomes an adult, and she has a child, is she responsible for what she does then? For forcing her children out of the house naked? How much of a pass does may get?” Saskia doesn’t respond. Even in theory, mama is divisive. </i>

My favourite parts reading was Lily discovering her true self and understanding her mother’s enigmatic nature. It was as if the fog was finally lifted and she could clearly see the dangers and the pain she was injected with.
In addition, King’s writing was intimate and rich with cultural elements which enriched the reading experience. The inclusion of etymologies was brilliant and it fitted right in with the flow. The prose was exquisite and deepened the feelings behind words. I simply cannot praise her writing enough. It is evident that King knows the material and she has the ability to write sentences that hits you in the gut; Bad Fruit is living proof.

Overall, I adored this book and I would even go
far as to say it’s one of my favourite reads this year. I firmly believe King is going to make it big and I look forward to reading more of her works in the future.

A challenging read that deals with some very difficult and disturbing subjects but, which is mainly about a dysfunctional mother and daughter relationship.

Lily (the daughter) is caught between her mother and father in their abusive relationship and who is preparing to flee the nest to university. Despite being one of three children it has fallen on Lily to be the go-between.

It's a haunting, well written, complex book, I just found it to be a difficult read.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK for the opportunity to preview.

I loved this character-driven debut novel for its unique voice, and for being jammed packed with tension. Although intergenerational trauma is always disturbing and utterly devastating, the book builds at a menacing pace and ends with everything you’d hoped for. The shock residue will stick to any reader long after the final page.

The story opens during the summer while Lily is waiting to go to Oxford to study law. She lives with her family in Greenwich, London, with her siblings Jacob and Julia. Caught between a fight between her parents, she navigates the complex personalities that surround her. Lily’s subservience to her unpredictable and explosive mother is at the heart of Bad Fruit. Her mother is clearly dysfunctional and cannot cope without her, and it’s this relational prison that kept me reading. How Chinese is Lily forced to make herself? And why?

Sleeping in an attic room, she is able to dodge her mother’s demands for a time, but we know it won’t be for long. It made me feel scared for Lily and angry with her mother, and I found myself drained by the emotional toll suffered by the family. Through Lily’s flashbacks to an earlier time, we are able to piece together a dark family dynamic where a deep layer of deception lies at the crux of this truly disturbing tale. I had to wonder who the bad fruit was. Added to this, Lily forms a friendship with Lewis, an older man who has the potential to be as dangerous to her as her own toxic family.


Overall, this beautifully written novel is truly memorable. A powerfully immersive foray into a teenager’s life where the most toxic relationships are a little too close to home. Ella King is definitely one to watch.

Lily Clarke lives with Mama and Daddy in Greenwich. She has two older siblings, Julia and Jacob. Mama is very demanding, insisting that Lily does as she is told and satisfies Mama’s every whim. In the long summer before Lucy goes to Oxford, she starts to get “visions”. Thinking she has an illness she goes to see her doctor, who, after speaking to Lily diagnoses that she is actually having flashbacks.

I wasn’t at all sure about this book at the start, and thought it would be a DNF. What at first appears to be coercion soon develops into something much darker and disturbing. Though the subject matter was very distressing and shocking, I did continue to read, invested as to what would happen next.

This is a well written and very empathetic story, amazingly a debut novel. Whilst the subject matter was not to my taste, the way in which it was handled by King made a compelling read.

I would recommend, but carefully.

Thank you NetGalley.

This is a potent uncovering of a toxic mother/daughter relationship, generational trauma, and a daughter's attempts to break free - I'm sure many readers will love it but me, I just feel like I've read this story so many times before in contemporary fiction.

There's a vividness in the writing but the flashbacks and sheer number of dark family secrets to be unfurled made it lose some impact for me.

WARNING: could be triggering for those who cannot cope with family abuse. It's not worth reading it no matter how good it was to obliterate your mental health.

So yes the book was good.. very good. A superb novel that delves into the relationships of a family suffering for decades at the hands of abuse. Not going to lie.. this was horrendous to get through and it will stay with me for a very long time.

The characters are so complex that at times they don't even understand themselves. The family dynamic is toxic and unstable which regularly stirs up emotions and terrible memories. I wouldn't say this was a thriller more of a literary novel.

The Ending was positive and it was nice to see that there are good people in the world willing to step up and be the support someone needs. We all have to lean on someone sometimes.

Really enjoyed it and highly recommend. It's definitely worth a read.

Bad Fruit was very well written and I thought it dealt with very difficult subjects in a raw but sensitive way. I really got into the protagonist, Lily's head and was blown away by her story. The only negative was that I wasn't a huge fan of the flashbacks - I found them to be quite disjointed, throwing you out of the story.

Content Warnings: parental abuse, domestic abuse, self harm, slut shaming/victim blaming, sexual abuse, rape (mentioned)

This novel is an exploration of trauma and as such deals with a lot of very heavy subjects. Please take all the content warnings into serious consideration if you need to.

Lily has spent her life striving to appease her emotionally volatile mother. Though Lily is on the brink of gaining independence when she moves to Oxford for university, her relationship with her mother grows even more complex and strained when Lily begins to get flashbacks which are not her own, but are snippets of her mother's traumatic past.

Wow. It's been a while since a novel has left me so emotionally floored. 'Loved' doesn't feel like the correct term, because this is such a heavy book, but I am incredibly impressed by it, and I certainly don't think I'll forget this one any time soon. Aside from a very engaging writing style, the story is easy to get drawn into, as the reader spends the narrative unravelling the stories of Lily and her mother. The depiction of inherited trauma and cycles of abuse is at times tough to read, but ultimately very well done, and handled with a lot of kindness. The novel's exploration of the complexity of relationships and different facets of people is also excellent. This was quite a difficult book to assign a star rating to for me, but the success of balancing the emotional gut punch it gave with clear tones of sympathy, love, and hope made this a five star read.

Thank you to NetGalley, Ella King, and HarperFiction for the ARC of Bad Fruit.

So so dark but so so gripping and heartbreaking. I admit that I struggled with the first quarter of this book, but once I got used to the writing style and the characters I found it difficult to put down. The complexities of mother-daughter relationships are laid bare in this book and it’s deeply affecting. The writing is incredibly emotive and powerful. I won’t forget this book in a while.

A well written debut but not a great read for me. The story centres around a totally dysfunctional family, As I have my own similar family it was a little too close for comfort.

A toxic mother / daughter relationship, a toxic family. Secrets and lies. Lily loves her mother, but knows how her mother treats her isn't right. There are secrets hidden, secrets Lily wants to know, that she feels will her her understand her mother. But can a family that has only ever tried to destroy each other ever be anything different?

A fast-paced story of a family set out to destroy each other. This was a very quick read, the book itself was very good but just not one that was for me. However, I think a lot of others will definitely find this book gripping, brutal and heartbreaking.

A disturbing thriller centring on the toxic relationship between a mother and her daughter, and impact of generations of trauma in families. Compelling but dark.

This was a really interesting story. It was a bit confusing at times but it was very different and unusual and I enjoyed reading it. It did take some concentration but it was worth sticking with.

Bad Fruit is a wonderful novel evocative of the taste and smell of the titular bad fruit. Ella King masterfully depicts a rotten family; a horribly compelling, charismatic and twisted mother and the different hold she has on her three children. Inter-generational pain quietly and unsensationally spools through the novel alongside the redemptive qualities of Greenwich Park and Peranakan food. It is so beautifully written, the plot intricate and unsettling, it is hard to believe it is a debut novel. I highly recommend.

Many thanks to Harper Collins UK and NetGalley for the ARC.

4.5*

Wow, what a book!

It took me a little while to get into this one but once it had me in its grip I could not look away. I read over half of it in a single sitting, staying up til 3am to reach its final conclusion!!

A very dark tale, excellently written to feel cloying and claustrophobic. There is a repetitive element in this story with the toxic mother who drinks spoilt juice, and the idea of this was so powerful, it’s one of those things from a book that I’m never going to forget!

This had an absolute chokehold on me by the time we reached the twist and turns. Honestly one of the best thrillers I’ve read in a long time.

Trigger warnings galore!! You can check out several of them on StoryGraph!

Out of all the books I've reviewed lately, Bad Fruit has stayed with me and snippets of it still drift through my mind. From the first page, we feel the sticky, sour taste of generational trauma and abuse. With a narcisstic mother, absent father, traumatised siblings, the family is in chaos. Thankfully, redemption comes from beyond the family.. Ella King has written this with suchskill, power and insight that it's difficult to formulate a comment on the book. Maybe it's enough to say - Bad Fruit should be read by anyone who appreciates a superbly written book and who has an interest in trauma and its effect on family! But read with care because it is disturbing and at times leaves you feeling as though it's you, the reader, who has drunk the soured juice..