The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing

The Good Girls is a narrative non-fiction work about a tragedy that occurred in 2014 in a small Indian village where two young teenagers were found hanging from a mango tree. TW if you are planning to look up on the internet, there are graphic images of the hanging so beware of stumbling upon one, I suggest searching for the ‘Badaun case' on Wikipedia directly. Other trigger warnings include suicide, rape, murder, casteism, etc.

It's a wonderfully researched and written journalistic work, the author narrates the audiobook as well and she is probably my favorite Indian narrator by far. Very few audiobooks do justice to the narration of bilingual text without introducing awkwardness to the colloquial words. Sonia does a fantastic job of sticking to her natural accent in both English and the few sentences/words of Hindi in this book.

If you are a non-Indian looking to learn about this case or in general interested in a true crime story based in India, this might not be the easiest introductory book. It is transfixing and very well told but requires that you have a basic understanding of the culture and terms used in the book. I would highly highly recommend it to people who are comfortable reading Indian books already. In the end, the story left me shattered but well informed.