Just graduated from high school and waiting to start college at Oxford, Lily lives under the scrutiny of her volatile Singaporean mother, May, and is unable to find kinship with her elusive British father, Charlie. When May suspects that Charlie is having an affair, there’s only one thing that calms May down: a glass of perfectly spoiled orange juice served by Lily, who must always taste it first to make sure it’s just right. This is the story of Lily and the abuse she's been dealt by her neurotic and cruel Singaporean mother. With searing writing, Ella King charts how abuse in a family affects everyone in it. […] The richness of detail and depth of understanding that King gives each character is quietly masterful.” Disturbing, poignant and memorable all at once- an exploration of a very dark relationship between a daughter and her mother.”

As a storm of memories builds over one stifling summer, Lily must recast everything. What if her house isn’t a home – but a prison? What if her mother isn’t a protector – but a monster . . . Best book I have read in a long long time. Intelligently written, really well paced. I devoured this’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ It’s the summer holidays, and Lily is waiting for the fall when she’ll commence her first year at Oxford. Until then, she must continue to single-handedly manage her mother’s erratic moods since her father and siblings are incapable of doing so. From preparing her mother’s favourite Singaporean meals to altering her appearance to look more like her, Lily will do just about anything to avoid her mother’s wrath. However, at its peak, I felt that the author came just shy of emotionally manipulating the reader. Any more abuse and it would have felt gratuitous, in my opinion.Bad Fruit is a beautiful collision of mothers and daughters, human darkness and human kindness, truth and lies, remembering and forgetting, trauma and healing.” the premise was interesting and the novel started off strong. it hooked me from the very first line and i was so intrigued by the story that i read the first act in one sitting. the writing was good, too, and the story was executed well. true that the mother-daughter relationship was nuanced, as were the main character's other relationships, and the author excels at writing the duality and complexity of their dynamics. yet, it still did not pull me into the story. i was not invested at all, which was probably why i was able to fall asleep three times. really, i don't have anything particularly bad to say about the book because i was simply bored. it just didn't do it for me. Bad Fruit is a truly memorable debut novel. A cleverly layered story of inherited trauma, a complex and damaged family dynamic, identity, trust, growth and a young woman understanding that the hardest thing she can do might just be the thing that saves her. Ella King opens up the fraught space between mother and daughter to reveal both the unbearable weight of inherited traumas as well as the uncontainable desire of a heart reaching for life. Bad Fruit cuts away the skin of a family as if a daughter could be a knife slicing through lies, pain, and fear. The heart hidden beneath all the secrets is sweet. The heart hidden beneath the secrets is hers. Breathtaking.”

Beautiful, disturbing, impossible to put down. Bad Fruit heralds a seriously impressive new talent in Ella King’ CHRIS WHITAKER At once an addictive thriller with a mystery at its heart and an erudite reflection on the challenges unique to a multiracial family, this is an ambitious debut from a writer to watch.” In a debut whose drama and suspense are worthy of a thriller, Lily manages her mother’s erratic behavior, often consoling her with a glass of her favorite drink: spoiled juice.” I devoured this, was completely gripped. Beautiful, astounding for a debut novel’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I don't know, I just feel like I should have felt something tugging at my heartstrings and I didn't. I just could not get immersed in this story no matter how sharp the actual writing was. I know her mother experienced horrific abuse but I'm not a believer in that being any justification for abusing her own children but I say that as someone who grew up with loving and supporting parents. What do I know? On this subject, thankfully, very little.This book does deal with the subject of abuse and trauma, and although the subjects are covered with great care and obvious research this may be a trigger for some readers. A compelling debut that fizzes with tension from start to finish, blending the subtle erudition of literary fiction with the drama and suspense of the very best thrillers. Masterful in its evocation of the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, this is a darkly fascinating, tightly plotted narrative from a writer to watch.”

Overall, this is an incredibly well written novel that has you full of questions from the start and you do get answers. The pace is pitched extremely well and I genuinely couldn’t put it down as this is a psychological thriller that has you in its grip throughout. Highly recommended. Helena Lee, editor of East Side Voices: Essays Celebrating East & Southeast Asian Identity in Britain Having little knowledge of things Singaporean, I loved the cultural descriptions too. Food shopping, preparation, and cooking were almost characters themselves and I chortled a bit with the mention of calamari in particular. Bad Fruit occupies that liminal space between psychological thriller and horror,beautifully written and incredibly disturbing. In thislushly poisonous tale, we follow a teenage girl on the cusp of freedom from her tyrannical mother. Things take a turn towards the supernatural when she gains access to intergenerational memories and begins to finally understand her family’s strange behavior. Perfect for those who enjoyed Natsuo Kirino’s underrated mishmash of thriller and body horror, Grotesque.“

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Debut author King skillfully brings to light the layered, deeply complex machinations that lurk below the surface in families and confer the fragile impression of normalcy; this family’s crosshairs of obligation, love, and resentment, too, are never oversimplified. May is especially captivating: a veritable tyrant who’s also full of sympathetic, deeply human insecurities. […] Layered, variable, and, like spoiled orange juice, sometimes complicatedly bitter.” This is an exceptional novel about a toxic mother-daughter relationship and I found it extremely difficult to put down. It's definitely psychological in nature but I don't know if I'd call it a thriller. More like fiction or literary fiction as another reviewer noted. I'm not going to say much more because I don't want to give anything away. I'll just say that I was emotionally wrung out by the ending which I really liked by the way. A beautiful, bewitching, unsettling and unputdownable dream of a book . . . .I genuinely loved this, it will stay with me for a long time’ LISA JEWELL