Happy Release Day!
Congrats Emily
on release today of
Good Days Bad Days!
Good Days Bad Days by Emily Bleeker
Fiction, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, 360 pages
Published October 7, 2025, by Lake Union Publishing
A daughter reconnects with her estranged parents before it’s too late in an emotional novel about memories, secrets, and finding home by the bestselling author of When We Chased the Light.
Charlie McFadden was fifteen years old when CPS removed her from her hoarded home. Her mother, Betty, chose her worthless collectibles. Her father chose Betty. Neither chose Charlie.
Thirty-one years later, a mother herself and cohost of a popular reality show with her husband, Charlie is proud of what she accomplished without her parents—relative strangers she never saw again. Until the day Charlie’s father pleads with her to come home and to say goodbye to her mother, now confined to a memory care center. Betty has her good days, recognizing her daughter with familiar resentment. And her bad ones, lost in the past as a blissful young mother with a cherished newborn. Those days make Charlie feel loved.
For Charlie, each memory is a journey and a revelation. She sees a mother she never knew—bright and beautiful with so much promise. But hidden away is also a fiercely guarded secret. Shared, it could finally bring hope and healing to a broken family. If Betty can bear to remember it.
My thoughts about Good Days Bad Days ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first lines.)
First line—"Present Day. Greetings from Lake Geneva. The mural is new."
There is so much going on in this story. Charlie is taken away from her family and home at the age of fifteen, and is never reconnected with them. I can't even imagine—to live your life thinking/knowing that your parents chose their way of life over you. Thirty-one years later, a call from her father changes her life again.
Charlie goes back home to help her dad clean up their hoarder house so that they don't lose it. She finds her mom in a memory care unit, having some good days, and some bad days. The good ones are hard on Charlie because then she sees the mother who didn't want her. The bad days are the days that Charlies gets a glimpse of her mother's past and the mom she wished she would have had growing up.
I was intrigued as I learned about Betty in her younger years, how beautiful and vivacious she was and how she captivated those around her. As her life is unraveled we come to understand, just a little bit, how her life took a turn and how she became the person that she is now.
I absolutely loved everything about this story and was enthralled by all of the drama, joy, and love that was experienced. Yes, there is a lot of dysfunction in this story but then don't we all have some of that in our lives. Getting through that dysfunction to the other side is rewarding and is sometimes worth the struggle.
I highly recommend Good Days Bad Days and will be suggesting it to every reader that I know.
I received an ARC of Good Days Bad Days and this is my honest opinion.
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About the author
Emily Bleeker is a Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestselling author of eight novels, with her ninth publishing in Fall 2025. Combined, her books have reached over two million readers and counting.
When she’s not writing, Emily performs on the house team of a local improv group in suburban Chicago, where she lives with her husband, kids and kitten muse, Hazel. ~ Author's website
Connect with Emily
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