For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing

At the prestigious Belmont Academy it’s their job to shape their students into the best versions of themselves and no one knows this better than the Teacher of the Year, Teddy Crutcher, who justifies his extreme methods by saying it’s all For Your Own Good. While this was one of my most anticipated reads of 2021, sadly, it fell short. Keep reading to see what didn’t work for me.

Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the esteemed Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest.

He says his wife couldn't be more proud—though no one has seen her in a while.

Teddy really can’t be bothered with the death of a school parent that’s looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy’s personal life. His main focus is on pushing these kids to their full academic potential.

All he wants is for his colleagues—and the endlessly meddlesome parents—to stay out of his way.

It's really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost.

Publisher: Berkley  | Genre: Mystery/Thriller | Source: Publisher  | Rating: 3 Cups

Teddy’s goal is to make sure all his students are the best academic versions of themselves and he’ll stop at nothing to make sure they achieve their best potential. When a string of murders rock the school, Teddy, once again, must do all he can to look out for his students, no matter the cost. Although his students aren’t making it easy, especially when they start digging around in his personal life and who knows what they could unearth.

I started this one way back in October, read about a third of it, sat it down, then completely forgot about it until I rediscovered it while unhauling a few of my books in April. It didn’t even cross my mind that I hadn’t finished it. The odd thing about this book is that when I finally did pick it up, I read it in no time because the writing is very fluid.

What stopped me from enjoying this one were the characters. I just didn’t care about them. Teddy is obsessed with being Teacher of Year and even more obsessed with making sure his students succeed academically to the point that he bullies them in hopes of reshaping them. Then we have the two main students of the book Courtney and Zach and they both were horrible although Zach did have moments of likability. There are also other members of staff and a former student intent on making Teddy’s life as miserable as he made hers. Everyone was a bit unhinged and out of control.

The plot was interesting and could have been great but everything was revealed before it happened causing a lack of suspense and tension. Then the end was just a bit of a mess. It was almost as if she spent so much time creating all these avenues then suddenly she hit her word count and needed to wrap up the story.

Overall, this one was just a bit of a mess. It was a lackluster story of horrible people doing horrible things. 

Have you read this one? What did you think? Are you a fan of Samantha Downing?