The Good Girl

Mia is a 25-year-old art teacher living in Chicago. She is the outcast daughter of prominent Judge James Dennett and grew up in a wealthy, isolated family.

Initially, Mia plays the role of someone in need of rescuing. She is kidnapped for ransom and appears to be a victim of circumstance because of her family’s wealth and her father’s local prominence. In the car and cabin with Colin, she fights back but soon becomes passive, depressed, and lethargic. In many ways, Mia sees herself as a victim—she talks to Colin about her lonely childhood and her father’s abuse and neglect. After her rescue, Mia is silent, glassy-eyed, and docile. Her fight is gone. She plays the role of a victim of trauma.

Like many of the tropes in this novel, however, Mia is not what she seems. As we learn about her grief, her insistence on keeping her child, and her agency in choosing Colin as a lover instead of her captor, it is clear Mia took action to save herself. The final chapter of the novel makes this even more clear—Mia was the orchestrator of her own kidnapping. She is not a victim but a hero on a mission to end her father’s reign of terror.