Love a character-driven suspense story? Looking for new Dark Academia books? Check out my review of Bad Habits, a story of rivalry and obsession set in an elite graduate school program.

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What is Bad Habits About?

Bad Habits by Amy Gentry. To be published by HMH/Mariner Books on February 2, 2021. Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

Synopsis: Professor Claire “Mac” Woods finally has the acceptance and admiration she has long craved. At an academic conference, Claire is surprised to run into a face from a past she’d rather forget: the moneyed, effortlessly perfect Gwendolyn Whitney, Mac’s foil, rival, and former best friend. When Gwen moved to town in high school, Claire—then known as Mac, a poor kid from a troubled family who had too much on her plate—saw what it meant to have the very blueprints to success. Mac had almost nothing, except the will to change. Change she did, grinding herself to work as hard as straight-A Gwen. Eventually, she’s also admitted into the same elite graduate program as Gwen. But then Mac and Gwen become entangled with the department’s power-couple professors and compete head-to-head for a life changing fellowship. The more twisted the track toward success becomes, the more Mac has to contort herself to stay one step ahead.

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Review of Bad Habits

Claire “Mac” Woods is attending an academic conference, preparing to interview for her dream professorship. She’s disconcerted to run into Gwen, her former friend and sometime rival, who’s sporting a huge engagement ring. The story then goes back to Mac’s childhood. Abandoned by her father, Mac is left to protect her autistic sister Lily from their mother, who habitually spends Lily’s disability income on drugs. In high school, Mac meets Gwen. Rich and brilliant, Gwen seems to have all the things Mac is missing in her life. Separated in college, they both end up in the same interdisciplinary graduate program: the cultish Emerging Studies program led by the charismatic Bethany Ladd.

Bad Habits is focused on three main strands. First, Mac and Gwen’s complicated friendship. Next, an inside look at graduate school, that weird pressure cooker of intellectual pretension, competition for scarce resources, and economic hardship. Finally, Mac’s desire for success so she can support her mother and sister. While Gwen is free to focus on her studies, Mac needs to waitress while scheming to outmaneuver her cohort of graduate students and grab the brass ring.

I thought Bad Habits did a great job of portraying the complexity of female friendship. Mac is fiercely competitive. Gwen, with the inborn self-confidence of the rich, doesn’t really consider them in competition at all.

I loved the portrayal of the Emerging Studies department, complete with a dinner party that’s feels a bit like an homage to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Fun fact: I spent seven long years of my life in graduate school. (I don’t use my title professionally, but if you wish, you may call me Dr. Jen.) While the Emerging Studies department in Bad Habits is an amusing spoof, with courses in unintelligible and seemingly useless things like ethical negation and economimesis, it’s also a fairly accurate look at the claustrophobic, competitive crucible that is graduate school in the humanities. You’re being sized up by your professors and fellow students as future colleagues, you’re competing for limited funding and jobs, you’re trying to survive for years on a tiny stipend. It’s a lot.

As Mac schemes to survive the program and win a coveted fellowship, she has to decide how what she’s willing to do to beat out her fellow students and have a career that might allow her to save Lily from their mother.

Will You Like Bad Habits?

If you love well-written psychological suspense with amoral characters, I think you’ll definitely enjoy this. If, on the other hand, you need positivity in a book and write Goodreads reviews that complain “every character in this book was so unlikeable,” Bad Habits probably won’t be for you. NO judgment – in 2020-21 I see the need for positivity!

Unrelated comment: I question the title, which to me doesn’t really fit the book.

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If you love books with a Dark Academia vibe, this definitely fits the bill and I added it to Exploring Dark Academia: a YA and Adult Book List – check the list out for more suggestions of things to read and watch.

Tell me in comments: are you interesting in this one?