Book Review: For Your Own Good | Samantha Downing

No one writes characters more twisted, unlikable, and delightfully fun than Samantha Downing. Every single book of hers is a surprise and delight! In For Your Own Good, a teacher at a prestigious prep school may be taking his lessons a bit too far, but of course it’s always for the good of his students…right?

About the Book | For Your Own Good

Characters

Teddy Crutcher is an English teacher at Belmont Academy and the most recent recipient of the Teacher of the Year award. Allison is his wife. Sonia Benjamin is another English teacher and an alumna of Belmont Academy. Mark is her husband. Frank is a math teacher. Joe is the school custodian.

Zach Ward is a student at Belmont Academy. He is close friends with Courtney Ross, another student at Belmont. Ingrid is Courtney’s mother and the president of the PTA at Belmont. Lucas is another friend of Zach’s. Fallon is an alumna of Belmont Academy who has a grudge against Teddy.

Plot

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.

USA Today bestselling author Samantha Downing is back with her latest sneaky thriller set at a prestigious private school—complete with interfering parents, overeager students, and one teacher who just wants to teach them all a lesson… (Synopsis from Goodreads)

Review | For Your Own Good

As a doctoral student myself, I’ll give pretty much any mystery or thriller set at in an academic setting a try. Add to that an auto-buy author for me, Samantha Downing, and there was no way I was passing up For Your Own Good!

Samantha Downing has said that her own high school experiences inspired For Your Own Good, which is set in the fictional preparatory school of Belmont Academy. The pressure to fit in with other students, the pressure to get good grades, and the pressure to set yourself for a good future—those are hallmarks for many of us when we remember our school years, and they certainly ring true for the students of Belmont Academy.

No one is more committed to helping their students achieve excellence than Teddy Crutcher. Teddy is not your average teacher, though. He’s won Teacher of the Year at the prestigious Belmont Academy, he loves helping his students be their best selves, and he is most likely a complete psychopath. Teddy uses…unconventional teaching methods. But of course, he only does it because he knows what is best for his students, right?

As the book opens, Teddy is meeting with the father of junior Zach Ward over a B+ Teddy recently gave Zach on a paper. Zach is attractive, comes from a wealthy family, and beloved by students and teachers at the school. Teddy sees it as his job to knock Zach down a peg and teach him a lesson. Teddy’s utter disdain for Zach is presented comically, as even in his own private ramblings he admits that Zach is quite intelligent and talented, while the lower grade is related to Zach’s privilege in life, not his academic performance.

Downing also narrates some chapters from Zach’s perspective, and we learn that Teddy’s opinion on Zach couldn’t be further from the truth. Zach is a hard-worker, smart, privileged young man who is (like many of the students at Belmont) being crushed under the weight of pressure from his parents to get the right grades, get into an Ivy, and have a successful career. Zach is close friends with another student, Courtney, and I found it fascinating how Teddy had the opposite opinion on Courtney as he did Zach, despite her also having the same privileged background.

Downing presents Teddy’s dichotomous thoughts about Zach and Courtney to great effect. With Zach, Teddy feels it is his duty to knock him down a peg, despite his stellar performance. With Courtney, Teddy wants to actively help and support her, though this is largely because her mother is the president of the PTA and was active in awarding Teddy Teacher of the Year. Teddy is so delightfully, grotesquely self-serving. His opinions on any given person are solely related to whether they help him or make him feel less than.

One particularly interesting character is an alumna of Belmont named Fallon. Fallon is introduced to us through Teddy, who regularly receives heated emails from his former student. We learn that Teddy sabotaged Fallon’s chance at getting into college by writing a letter of recommendation implying she cheated in his class. Fallon’s character adds tension to the book, as the reader can see that this is the direction Zach is headed toward with Teddy set on destroying his future. As the story progresses, Fallon begins to play a larger and unexpected role in the story that I quite enjoyed.

I found Teddy to be a completely captivating character. He’s arrogant, vindictive, spiteful, devious, intelligent, delusional, quirky, and manipulative. As a character, he’s often unintentionally hilarious (I was particularly tickled by his tendency to reward himself with a glass of 2% milk despite his lactose intolerance) and at times he can even be somewhat sympathetic, despite his atrocious actions.

No one writes compelling villains the way Downing does. Like some of her other villainous characters, Teddy’s actions, behaviors, and thoughts are often despicable. Yet he is presented in such a playful way, the reader can’t help but have tiny moments of rooting for him, only to then remember all of the things he has done and quickly reverse. By the end, I was rooting for his demise but unsure if it would come. Downing always surprises at the end of her books, so no outcome is off the table.

A delightfully wicked book that I couldn’t put down!

About the Author | Samantha Downing

Samantha Downing is the author of the bestselling My Lovely Wife, nominated for the Edgar, ITW, Macavity awards in the US, the CWA award in the UK, and the winner of the Prix des Lectrices award in France.

Her second book, He Started It, was released in 2020 and became an instant international bestseller.

Her third thriller, For Your Own Good, was released in the US on July 20, 2021 and was an instant USA Today bestseller.

A Twisted Love Story was released in the US on July 18, 2023.