Good Joy, Bad Joy

This book has left me with a quandary.  While the writing is excellent and my Kindle highlights were plentiful, I’m left feeling conflicted about the overall message.

Joy is an 89-year-old woman living a quiet, rules-abiding life in small-town Beacon, NY. Her best friend for the past 80 years is Hazel, a city-loving, free-spirited Brooklynite. Every day they greet each other with a text letting the other know they’re still alive and kicking. When Hazel informs Joy one day that she’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Joy is forced to confront the life she’s lived and examine what her future should look like. 

Joy feels invisible - an issue many of us can experience as we get older. She’s always abided by the rules and shaped her behavior and persona to please others, as she was taught. Hazel, on the other hand, dresses flamboyantly, has always dyed her hair red and, as she tells Joy, made sure to “take up space”, even if it wasn’t being offered.

How does “Good Joy" respond to her friend’s impending death? Meet “Bad Joy”.

It’s not that Joy suddenly goes from good to bad, but let’s just say her moral compass becomes a LOT more flexible! Some might cheer for her newfound boldness or find it heartwarming. I found the new version of Joy to be pretty selfish, inconsiderate and childish. Even her kindness to an ex-con neighbor was sullied by her willingness to put him at risk later with one of her plots. 

That’s where my problem with the book lies: Does redefining yourself outside the self-imposed constraints you’ve lived under your whole life justify doing things that cause or may cause collateral damage for others? To me, that’s a slippery slope of a message.

I’m all for celebrating a woman finding a richer, more diverse version of herself after being defined for years by her status as wife, mother, daughter, etc. The problem I have with this book is that it seems to communicate that discovering there is more to yourself and not being beholden to dysfunctional people-pleasing behaviors means it’s necessary to embrace the most ridiculous opposing behaviors. If that’s the hill Joy wants to eventually die on … that’s on her.

I actually enjoyed the writing a lot, and there are so many nuggets of wisdom in these pages that are worth a look. For that, I’d give this 4 stars.  At the end of the day, though, I can’t get past who Joy decided to become and what I find questionable messaging. I’ll have to be an outlier at 2 stars for that. This was an immersion read and the narration by Kimberly M. Wetherell and Maggi-Meg Reed was nicely done, though I preferred Kindle only for most of it.

This is getting a lot of glowing reviews, so please consider others’ opinions when deciding on this book. I loved Brammer’s debut The Collected Regrets of Clover, so I still think her writing is top notch!

★★★

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press, NetGalley and author Mikki Brammer for the DRC and to Macmillan Audio for the ALC to honestly review. This is out now.