Bad Things Happen Here

by Rebecca Barrow

Overview

I Killed Zoe Spanos meets The Cheerleaders in this “atmospheric and multi-layered mystery” (Kara Thomas, author of The Cheerleaders) about an island town with a history of unsolved deaths—and a girl desperate to uncover the mystery behind it all.

Luca Laine Thomas lives on a cursed island. To the outside world, Parris is an exclusive, idyllic escape accessible only to the one percent. There’s nothing idyllic about its history, though, scattered with the unsolved deaths of young women—deaths Parris society happily ignores to maintain its polished veneer. But Luca can’t ignore them. Not when the curse that took them killed her best friend, Polly, three years ago. Not when she feels the curse lingering nearby, ready to take her next.

When Luca comes home to police cars outside her house, she knows the curse has visited once again. Except this time, it came for Whitney, her sister. Luca decides to take the investigation of Whitney’s death into her own hands. But as a shocking betrayal rocks Luca’s world, the identity of Whitney’s killer isn’t the only truth Luca seeks. And by the time she finds what she’s looking for, Luca will come face to face with the curse she’s been running from her whole life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534497436
Publisher:	Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication date:	06/28/2022
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	258,480
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.60(h) x 1.30(d)
Lexile:	HL810L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Rebecca Barrow is the critically acclaimed author of Interview with the Vixen, This Is What It Feels Like, You Don’t Know Me But I Know You, Bad Things Happen Here, and And Don’t Look Back. She is a lover of sunshine, Old Hollywood icons, and all things high femme. She lives and writes in England. Visit her at Rebecca-Barrow.com.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1 1
Parris, the island where it seems girls go to die.

And like always, Luca is the only one to remember Polly on her birthday.

Luca drives with the windows down, air twisting her curls around her face. Maybe that isn’t true. Maybe people do go to Polly’s grave, put down flowers that will sit and rot among the headstones. Perhaps they stop to clean off the photograph Polly’s mom chose, the one with her hair slicked back in a ballet bun and red-painted lips hiding her braces.

Luca wouldn’t know, because she never goes there. That’s not where Polly is, to her. It’s just a box in the ground and a stone in a place far too somber for a girl like the one Polly was.

It’s still early enough that the island is quiet as she drives across it. Not that it’s ever busy, really, but the roads are almost completely empty, every light green as she heads toward the bridge.

It rises up into the blue sky, the only way out of this place. Luca doesn’t drive across, though, but pulls to the side and turns the engine off. She gets out of the car, the stems of the orange carnations she brought with her pressed between her palms. Then Luca steps down, beside the bridge, onto the uneven rocky ground where nobody’s really supposed to go.

But we did, she thinks.

Her and Polly, climbing down these rocks, so they could reach the water below. That’s why she comes here. Or that’s mostly why.

Below her the ocean swirls, a calmness to the waves that’s unusual for this spot, and Luca throws out the carnations one by one, the bright blooms drifting down and down and down until they meet the water. “There you go, P,” she says. “Happy birthday.”

Three years she’s done this. She brings the flowers, she sits for a while; she starts to tell Polly something that’s happening and then stops, because what could she ever say that would mean anything now? School is shitty. Our favorite breakfast place closed. I realized I was in love with Jada right after you died and I told her about the curse and then she stopped speaking to me. What does any of that matter to Polly now? What does any of it matter when Luca is alive and she’s dead?

She was scared, the first time, to come back. To return to this place where the curse had surfaced. But then she had realized that really, this might be the safest place for her to go. After all, the curse never strikes the same place twice.

So she came, the first year, and the next, and now. And Luca will come back in a year and do it all again, like the ritual can change anything. But it means something to her, to do it. It means something that there’s somebody to remember Polly who really knew her. After all, Polly’s parents left the island soon after she died. Jada hasn’t talked to Luca in almost three years, acts like she and Luca and Polly were never even friends. And everybody else, well, they didn’t know her, and they don’t talk about her. She’s sure they have their reasons. Thinking about her is unnerving; they don’t like to look death in the face so close. Something like that.

Luca closes her eyes and remembers that last year, that last birthday. Fourteen years old. Polly is fourteen and Luca is seventeen now, will be eighteen in two short months. There was always that distance between them, Luca being born in the long days of summer and Polly coming so much later, arriving in the world during the spring bloom.

She waits there for as long as she can bear. Maybe it’s an hour, maybe it’s a minute. But when she’s done, Luca opens her eyes and looks down at the water again. She kisses her fingers and then holds them out to the air, her only goodbye to the girl she’s let down the most.

“I love you,” she says, words she never said when Polly was alive. “I’ll see you next year.”

And she leaves. She’s always leaving Polly behind, further and further with each day.

Editorial Reviews

05/09/2022

In this carefully plotted, character-driven mystery, 17-year-old, mixed-race Black Luca Laine Thomas believes that Parris—her affluent, majority-white, and outwardly idyllic island home—is cursed. Luca’s best friend Polly Stern drowned three years ago, and Luca is convinced that her death wasn’t accidental, especially given the island’s history of young women who die mysteriously. After meeting rich Asian newcomer Naomi Fontaine, 17, Luca’s older sister Whitney is found dead. When the Parris police force proves inefficient, Luca resolves to investigate Whitney’s death herself. Everyone is under suspicion, including Luca’s ex-friend, detective’s daughter Jada Charles; Whitney’s best friend; and a former drug dealer. But when a harrowing secret threatens to hinder the inquiry, the teens come together to upend Parris society’s pristine reputation. Luca’s investigative prowess makes her an impressive heroine, but it’s Naomi and Luca’s romance that keeps the narrative fresh. Through Luca—whose acute sense of identity as a queer fat girl is exemplified in her sardonic telling—Barrow (Interview with the Vixen) examines themes of mental illness and self-worth, forgiveness, and acceptance. A beginning note contextualizes instances of suicidal ideation, self-harm, and sexual violence. Ages 14–up. Agent: Suzie Townsend, New Leaf Literary and Media. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"With effortless, atmospheric prose, Barrow buries us in a world that is as foreign as it is familiar—where Black teenage girls are ignored and vilified, where grief settles on shoulders like rain, and where bad things happen in a beautiful place. I wish I could read this book for the first time again and again.

Ashley Woodfolk

Compelling and compulsive. Barrow expertly crafts a dark tale of sun-drenched dread that lays bare both the long-reaching impact of trauma and loss as well as the ways in which tragedy can so easily be disguised as destiny.

Morris Award-winning author of Charm & Strange Stephanie Kuehn

Beyond pristine beaches and the sparkling curtain of privilege lies a chilling mystery and a story of girlhood stolen too soon. Bad Things Happen Here will stay with you long after the final page.

author of Very Bad People and I Killed Zoe Spanos Kit Frick

An atmospheric and multi-layered mystery that surprises until the haunting end.

author of The Cheerleaders and That Weekend Kara Thomas

★ 2022-03-29
The island of Parris looks picture perfect, and that’s how the wealthy residents like it, despite the curse that every once in a while claims the life of a young woman.

Seventeen-year-old Luca Laine Thomas’ best friend, Polly, died three years earlier. Her death was deemed an accident, but Luca knows the truth lies elsewhere—in the curse that plagues the island but that no one else really believes in beyond childhood stories. Then the worst happens: Her beloved sister, Whitney, is found dead after a party, and Luca realizes the curse has finally come for her family. Now she needs to find answers before somebody else falls victim. Together with newcomer Naomi Fontaine (with whom Luca may be falling in love), she embarks on a dangerous investigation to discover the truth. But the process of unveiling the dark secrets of Parris and its rich, privileged, mostly White inhabitants leads them down a road of no return. With short chapters and a sparse, present-tense narrative, this contemporary novel fuses elements of mystery and romance as Luca’s beautifully told coming-of-age story unfolds against a dark backdrop of death. Luca’s grief, trauma, and mental illness are deftly explored and, juxtaposed with her strong sense of identity as a fat, Black, mixed-race, queer girl, provide a rich, empowering voice that carries this haunting story to a satisfying conclusion. Naomi is described as Asian.

There is not a word wasted in this sad and harrowing tale. (Thriller. 14-adult)

Kirkus Reviews