Bad Fruit: The unforgettable, gripping and highly acclaimed new crime thriller debut novel from a hot literary fiction voice of 2023

Product Information

Often feared for their carbs, bananas are an inexpensive fruit that's available year-round and highly versatile. While I know this isn't the most glowing review I will say that Ella King has tremendous talent and a very bright future ahead of her and I very much look forward to see what she comes up with next. Through such powerful prose, King brings a terrible sense of foreboding; through Lily’s increasing flashbacks we begin to piece together what happened in the past to cause such a devastatingly chaotic pot of simmering tension; a pot which finally just blows its lid clean off, scalding everything in its path! When May suspects that Charlie is having an affair, there's only one thing that calms May down: a glass of perfectly, spoiled orange juice served by Lily, who must always taste it first to make sure it's just right. After high praise from a trusted UK friend, I quickly attempted to source this and was able to find it at the Book Depository.

Gripping and devastating, from a voice that cuts as sharp as a knife, this is an unforgettable story about a family gone bad. In her debut novel, King brilliantly portrays generational abuse and trauma passed down from parent to child and a resulting, conscious fight to break free from the toxic cycle.Bad Fruit is a beautiful collision of mothers and daughters, human darkness and human kindness, truth and lies, remembering and forgetting, trauma and healing.

Don’t go in expecting some thrilling thrillride – however, if you want a sleeper of a literary domestic this one may be up your alley. On paper, this is the dangerous relationship but Ella King subverts what is expected when it comes this, heightening the impact of Lily’s relationships with her family. We are left wondering what really lies at the heart of this strange family and how any of them can escape the destructive cycle of dependence and anger we bear witness to. Oranges are famously known as the go-to source of vitamin C, and rightfully so, since a medium orange (about 5. I don't want to reveal too much about my family life—I mean I'm wearing a ski mask in my profile pic so that should give you an idea of my desire to be incognito—but this particular story was difficile to get through.But as home truths creep out of the shadows, Lily must recast everything: what if her house isn’t a home – but a prison? Again, I’m not sure I can say that I enjoyed this book but I am in awe of the author’s unflinching spotlight on the darker aspects of Asian society and family dysfunction. The author captured the essence of a toxic person so vividly in her that I would shiver every time she came onto the page and felt every bit of Lily’s apprehension and fear. Lily escapes to a bolthole she has created in the attic and as if the toxic atmosphere in the home isn’t bad enough she starts to have flashbacks which present a puzzling conundrum, who exactly is the bad fruit? As her mother becomes increasingly unhinged, Lily starts to have flashbacks that she knows aren’t her own.

Ella King has done a wonderful job of building the story in a way that makes you feel like you are going at the same pace as Lily. A portrait of abuse, it hinges on absurdity and suspense to tell a wild story of familial trauma and reckoning that never feels like a ‘trauma novel. This is such a well done character-driven suspense with some dark themes that will keep you guessing until the end. It’s the summer holidays, and Lily is waiting for the fall when she’ll commence her first year at Oxford.

I think my expectations going into this were a little skewed imagining this as a twisty psychological thriller and this is NOT that. As it reaches a climax towards the end it’s heartbreaking, so tense the atmosphere can be cut with a knife and although it’s not an easy read you are transfixed. Ella King won the Blue Pencil Agency pitch prize in 2019 with the first 500 words of her debut novel 'Bad Fruit', an accolade which I am pleased to say is supported by the absolute quality of the entire novel. The mother was a complete nutbag, I couldn't drum up any sympathy for her, she's beyond vile, and I couldn't understand why everyone carried on putting up with her - having unresolved issues yourself does not make it ok to abuse others. We meet Lily in the summer just before she’s due to start university, she’s secured a place at Oxford – her future looks bright.