Customer Reviews

Bad Girls Club

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I didn't want to read this book. I was compelled to read it. It is a disturbing and meticulously accurate portrait of what goes on behind the closed doors of the ultimate dysfunctional family. Ms. Gregerson brings us into the world of Destiny, a young teenage girl who bears the whole world on her shoulders. While she appears to be the only still-sane member of this family, as the book goes on you can see her slipping slowly away. While this may be a work of fiction, it is all too true for many families. Reading this raw and painful account, I felt both helpless and determined. What is there to do amidst such hopelessness and despair? And yet, we should be ever vigilant for throwaway kids such as Destiny - to step up and be that person who says "you're not disposable", "you do matter", "you are loveable", and "you're not alone."

This is a very powerful book, not for the faint of heart.

Judy Gregerson's Bad Girls Club clearly describes the twisted, corrosive web that mental illness weaves, affecting everyone involved. Giving up a possibility to work for the summer like other teens & withdrawing from her friends, Destiny is consumed "trying" to protect herself and her little sister Cassidy from her mother's erratic, vitriolic tirades. Depression follows and Destiny slides into denial regarding the severity of her mother's illness and need for professional help. Too young to understand her mother's erratic psychotic behavior, Destiny's little sister Cassidy becomes withdrawn and creates an imaginary friend as her companion. Overwhelmed with the stress of his struggling business, and faced with dealing with his wife's mercurial persona, Destiny's father too, becomes a victim of the denial trap and pushes on to Destiny the responsibilities of taking care of her little sister and her mentally ill mother. Bad Girls Club takes you deep into the heart and soul of a family sliding from rational thinking to denial, withdrawal, isolation and noxious reasoning in an attempt to deal with the disease of mental illness. Bad Girls Club will hold you captive and allow you to understand how mental illness can cripple and infect those close by.
Barbara Stolzenburg
Teacher Librarian
H.M. Jackson High Schookl

This book is intense, intense, intense. I've never read another book like it. Amazing.

Destiny has been holding her family together since her little sister, Cassidy, was born. There's a darkness in her family that no one else can see. No matter how many lights Destiny turns on, the darkness stalks her. The darkness has already claimed her mother, and is now taking control of her little sister, one pulled hair at a time. Her dad can't even help himself, so it falls on Destiny to make everything okay.

This was not a book I could read in one sitting. Ms. Gregerson's writing is so real that I felt Destiny's suffocation and had to take the break that Destiny couldn't. But I cared so much for her, I couldn't leave it alone. Destiny would draw me back, again and again. I ached for her. I wanted to help her and Cassidy. I wanted to shake their father. And part of what made it so intense was that deep inside, I knew it was real. Somewhere, there are real children living in this tilted reality. If they are lucky, they will find Bad Girls Club and they'll understand that they can reach for the light and get help.

The writing is beautiful and poetic. I cannot imagine the amount of research that must have gone into this book for it to be so real. I cannot think of any another book that I've read where in the middle of reading I realize I have to relax and breathe. Breathe. Wow. I wish Ms. Gregerson great success with Bad Girls Club. It was an incredible read that will stay with me for a long time to come.

Cana Rensberger ~ Writer/Teacher

It's been a long time since a book for teens has touched me as powerfully as Bad Girls Club, Judy Gregerson's emotionally-raw debut novel for young adults. In it, the author, a childhood victim of abuse and neglect herself, explores the devastating impact of a parent's mental illness. As her mother descends into madness, teenaged Destiny becomes caregiver to both her Mom and her little sister, and fights to keep her family intact. It's a gripping tale, written with the authenticity of experience.

Hungry

Judy Gregerson portrays Destiny as a brave and desparate teenager trying to cope with her mother's mental illness, her father's denial, and to protect her little sister. She explores the topic of the parentfication of children, where children take on parenting roles not only of siblings but of their own troubled parents. The book is an intense read and nothing is held back in terms of the danger and the physical and mental abuse the children experience. The novel demonstrates why these children choose to shun the world and become caught in the family drama, believing that as long as they are in the home disaster can be averted. Gregerson has included a list of websites children can turn to if they are in need of help.

Parent(s) who are mentally ill often wreak the lives of their children. BAD GIRL'S CLUB is about Destiny. She doesn have the luxury of a regular teen life : job, friends, etc. She is caught in the strangling web of her mother's mental illness. Destiny spends her days stuggling to protect her baby sister Cassidy from her mother's psycho episodes, but Cassidy is slipping away in to a make-believe world. Dad is no help and just stays away and acts like everything is OK.

Destiny's problems all rise out of the human need to love her mom. Denial, magical thinking, isolating, all in a fairy tale attempt to be normal, are plunging Destiny deeper and deeper in her own emotional storm. Destiny is cracking under the strain, shattering within. This book is about uncovering the secret dark places and letting in the light. It's about it's not okay and reaching out for help is. Reading this book is painful, but unless we open our eyes how are we ever going to see.

Ms. Gregerson has taken an often hidden topic and pried it open with a gentle yet firm hand.
She relays the tale of two sisters fighting for any sense of normalcy in a world crumbling around them.
Family dysfunction is an understatement in the premise for this work.
Bad Girls Club is tense and gut-wrenching, loving and tender and a story which happens too often in our own neighborhoods and families.
It is the story of the tangled web that mental illness spins and how that web traps and holds everything it touches.
Brilliant.

With mental health issues being so prevelant in society I was very intrigued by the premise of this book. Let me tell you that as hard as it was I read it in one sitting - it grabbed hold and would not let go.

All Destiny wants is to get a job and try to have a semblance of a normal life. Instead she is burdened with the responsibilty of taking care of her mentally ill mother and trying to protect her younger sister Cassidy from the violent rages and outbursts that have become more common than not. Destiny's life has never been anything but that of a constant caregiver and mediator...especially since the incident at Crater Lake. She loves her mother, and even though she knows that this is not a normal family life she is willing to do what her father asks and help keep her mother in their home, for better or worse.

As this book unfolds you watch this family go on such a downward spiral that my heart was literally breaking. As much as I hated to turn to the next page for fear of what was going to happen next, I was compelled to do so in hopes that a ray of light would be found and something positive would happen to change some of the bad to good. At first I was unsure if this could really happen - how could both parents let their children go through this living hell? I then thought of my own life, and the lengths I may go to keep my family in tact. Love is a very powerful emotion, and nothing is more powerful than the love between a parent and their children. As Ms. Gregerson points out in her Author's Note, children that come from abusive families are even more loyal to their parents than children who don't. They seem to constantly be searching for a way to gain acceptance and love from the parent(s) who neglects or abuses them.

This book is a true eye opener, although it is fiction we can't turn a blind eye to the fact that there are families like this in every town in America. I am hopeful that this book will give some of these families the strength they need to get the help so desperately needed before it is too late and the children are damaged to a point of no return. It will hopefully also make people think closely about some people they know and maybe will give them the strength to intervene in situations they know are not healthy for the family involved. The author has done a true service by writing about an issue that should not be ignored.

Questions for the author:

What made you decide to write the story from the perspective of the oldest daughter?

Well, it was personal really. I was a parentified child, meaning that I was one of those kids who took care of my mother and my older sister when my family was spiraling out of control. I was the one who felt responsible to hold everything together because no one else would. And I believed that multitudes of people all around the world experience that same thing -- they become the savior of their families because no one else will. I wanted to shine a spotlight on that problem and what it does to a kid. And on another level, this is a cautionary tale: beware what you do to your children. When 5 children a day die in this country because their mother, a family member, or someone who knows their parent kills them, we're in deep trouble. We are allowing the ruin of our children and then we wonder why these kids can't learn in school or why they turn to crime, or why they're depressed. This book tells why, in some cases, our children are lost.

What was your inspiration for the story?

There were several things that inspired me. And in some sense, it was reaching critical mass and feeling that I had to say something about this problem. I tell everyone the story about meeting a man whose mother set their house on fire after locking him and his little brother in. There was Susan Smith and Andrea Yates. I thought they were anomalies, but I found out that they aren't. I started studying this issue and realized that 500 mothers a year kill their children. I started wondering what it would be like to live in a family like that. What if every day, your little sister's life was on the line and you couldn't do anything except be the one who stood between her and your mother? What if you knew your life was on the line and you had to live with one eye open so you could survive? These are the things I thought about, they're the questions that horrified me, as I wrote this book.

Do you have any books currently in the works?

I currently have one book in the works about a girl whose mother deserts her at the local grocery store, leaving the girl with her eccentric extended family and the question, "Why did she leave me?" I'm about a third through that and may get back to it soon. I also have another book finished about a girl in a trailer park who's the underdog and can't seem to find her way.

What hobbies do you enjoy?

Oh, I'm an odd one. I love to research. That is really relaxing to me. I pick a topic and then I search it out. I travel a little. We have a summer place on a beautiful glacier fed lake and I love going there. I hang with my daughters who are almost 18 and 21. They're my greatest joy. I read some, mostly nonfiction. I have a few favorite TV shows like CSI and Ugly Betty. Other than that, I just hang and try to find things to laugh at. The absurdity of life amuses me.

[...]

From the opening pages where Destiny's father tells her that her job is to help her mother, June, to the final pages where Destiny must make a tough decision about her family, we see a girl torn between love for her mother and facing the reality of her mother's illness.

As her mother sinks deeper and deeper into her world of darkness, Destiny attempts to hold the family together. She remembers earlier times, when her mother was kind and gentle and showed her how to paint. But those days have long passed, and now Destiny is the only protector of her younger sister, Cassidy, who has imaginary friends and bruises and bald spots where she's pulled out her hair, and who talks to no one except Destiny. Their dad, Bob, lives in his own world of denial, defending his wife, saying she'll get better. Destiny wants to believe him, so she does.

In bits and pieces throughout the story, Ms. Gregerson reveals what happened that awful day at Crater Lake, the day their mother changed their lives forever. The only person Destiny can confide in is her best friend, Chloe, who urges Destiny to come stay with her family. But Destiny cannot leave: Her mother needs her, Cassidy needs her, even her father needs her. Finally, Destiny's grandmother recognizes the hopelessness of the situation and gives Father an ultimatum: Put June in the hospital or the girls go home with her.

Bad Girls Club portrays a realistic look at a family in crisis and what happens when the truth is denied. Have a box of tissues handy. You may need it.

Like any teen, Destiny just wants a normal life. She'd love to get a summer job, hang out with her best friend, Chloe, and her boyfriend, but she can't. Instead her life is spent caring for her younger sister, Cassidy, and insane mother. The father uses guilt and fear to manipulate Destiny, mentally keeping her a prisoner.

The darkness of this mental illness was so strong in the story that it manifested itself. At first, Destiny thought she was imagining things until the shadows started to follow her mother around, fueling her madness. When she finds her sister taking to an imaginary friend with black wings who flies and plans to cut their mother up into pieces, she realizes this madness is spreading like a disease. Slowly, this darkness tries to take her away too.

As the story unfolds, I begin to wonder why their mother isn't in a mental health facility and then memories of Andrea Yates hit. Do you know that the American Anthropological Association stated in 2005 more than 200 women kill their children in the US every year? These are the cases where a death has occurred and therefore is news worthy. What about those children who aren't killed and have to live through this mess? "Bad Girls Club" is a work of fiction, but it's definitely not a far fetched story.

Kudos to Judy Gregerson for bringing a story like this to the surface where it can be discussed.