Good Intentions

by Jessy Wu

THE BIGGEST STORY WAS ALWAYS THE ONE BETWEEN THEM

In the cramped basement office of their university newspaper, Jake and Nadia break a huge story that exposes a decade of institutional corruption. In the quieter hours, they also fall in love.

Then Nadia leaves.

A decade later, she returns from New York, once a fast-rising finance hotshot, now exiled after a deal gone wrong. Back in Sydney, Jake has forged a reputation as a crusading reporter whose by-line regularly brings down the rich and powerful.

Battlelines are drawn when they're each pulled into the orbit of a biotech visionary whose startup becomes Nadia's big break and the target of Jake's latest investigation. As old wounds flare, both must decide how far they'll go to come out on top.

Clear-eyed and taut, Good Intentions asks if it is possible to be a good person in a morally grey world, and what happens when someone you once loved with your whole heart threatens to topple everything you've built.

Genres: Fiction, Romance

Audible Audio

Published June 30, 2026

Reviews

[Emily Michelle]

DNF’d the second it started talking about peptides and ozempic 🤯

[Jade]

not even the epic highs and lows of sydney university stupol could save this

[ally]

regretted not starting a « speak truth to power » counter at the beginning.

i love sydney and a romance but the characters felt a bit flat - the kind of figures made to push the plot of a sitcom forward. no depth, no humanity. like seeing one-paragraph summaries of a few key personality traits placed repeatedly into different circumstances.

and on a serious note (and maybe this is a sign of my own flawed obstinacy) i’m not quite sure i ever believed the premise that there are ways to believe that you can change the world positively by working in big finance…

[k]

devastated to see crappy wmaf stories have made it to the sydney scene. sick of descriptions of almond eyes, smelly lunchboxes and a weird inconsistency in the use of mandarin (qiezi, baobei) and cantonese (gwei lo when the mandarin pinyin is gui lao - which perhaps betrays the author’s intended audience for this book).

also jane street ny is in downtown, not midtown and von neumann’s weighted coin is described as the “ban school uniforms” of maths interview questions (why on earth did old mate pull out python?!?).

separately, “henderson versus the monitor” … come on …

[Lehan]

We don’t need more academia-adjacent poorly written smut slop trash can litfic, even if it’s set in Sydney

[Umbar]

Ex-debaters have written much better. In fairness to Jessy Wu, other ex-debaters would probably write much worse.

[Samuel]

Why is the dude in this named after the blue guy from Avatar? Why does book club keep making me read about people who "unravel" before having inadvisably emotionally intense sex? Could any background to romance be less interesting than a conflict over drab, corporate amorality?

[Aislin Wells]

2.5 ★ — in a world full of novels written entirely by AI, this author makes the brave new choice to supplement about 30% worth of original content with only 70% sounding like regurgitated chatgpt-speak! credit where credit is due though because the premise was fun and the bits that didn’t sound like AI really were quite good

[Carrie]

This felt more like a YA novel than the “Normal People meets Industry” vibe the book’s marketing campaign promised. The characters lacked depth and the dialogue was incredibly cringey; I’m baffled as to why this is so common in Australian books, like whyyyyy is it so hard to write realistic conversations 😣

The legal aspects of the plot (in the 2nd half of the book) dragged on and failed to create any suspense or tension. The FMC had no personality. Very predictable & a bit meh overall…

[Linda Nixon]

A very easy read, I just love books that are set in my world (usyd). However I found the central theme quite simplistic and predictable - maybe morality isn’t black and white??? Who would’ve thought. Enjoyed it for a beach holiday but not sure I’d really recommend it onwards.

[Liam Fitzgerald]

Sharp and pacy, particularly at the start. As it went on, I felt that what it gained in concision, it lost in nuance. The later moments felt more like reading a plot summary (with each moment rushing into the next between the two main characters), rather than unpacking its key moral question.

[Jiadi]

I actually inhaled this because I was so invested in the main characters after the first half. But then the legal drama took me completely out of it - it was an unrealistic depiction of how a proceeding runs in Australia. I think the author needed to do some research.

Despite that, I’m updating this to 4 stars though as, on reflection, the emotions, the relationship between the main characters and the tension were all effective and definitely left an impression on me.

[Keely]

Thank god that’s over - only completed it as I suggested it for book club after having it recommended on instagram and TikTok. So cringey and slow. Do not rec

[nihaarika]

4.5 stars

not super sure about the accuracy of the legal proceedings in the last half of the book, but overall good intentions was a really compelling & gripping read. a stellar debut from jessy wu!!

longer rtc!

[Emily Cook]

Good intentions is a masterclass in unrealistic dialogue, one dimensional characters, telling, not showing and a plot pushed along by “and then and then and then”.

Normally I love when someone like Reid weaves Sydney into a story, but Wu’s clunkiness made it feel like she was naming references for the sake of naming them. Nothing about this felt uniquely Sydney or uniquely NYC.

I do have a soft spot for all things finance/VC/legal and part 2’s plot - though very squeaky clean - really drove this one home. But I can’t really go higher than 2.5

[Harriet]

I couldn’t make it past 30%. Just did not care about the story or characters at all and has put me in a major reading slump.

[Maddie]

So incredibly boring idk how I finished this

[Zach Mackey]

First half of the novel felt like it was adequately covered by the blurb on the back of the book, second half felt rushed, under researched and perhaps a fantasy of what could have been.
Fantastically covered the self involvement of student politicians…

[Sophie Johnson]

I really wanted to like this book, it was interesting reading a book set during my Stupol era and genuinely chuckled at solidarity forever being sung at bar broadway however the second half took me out of the story a bit

[Rochelle]

If you went/go to usyd, this would be great. For anyone who didn’t go to usyd, and find honi and the clique insufferable, this is not for you.

[Gay Harding]

Just not very interesting. If it’s going anywhere it’s taking too long at 90 pages.

[Kate Gough]

This started strong, but the ending (and particularly when the legal drama started) really took me out of it. As an Australian lawyer, I felt so disappointed about how unrealistic the depiction was. I wish the author had just done a bit more research. I couldn’t get back into the story after - the timelines felt confused and dialogue unrealistic, and I wonder how accurate the depiction was re careers in journalism/finance. In any event, I enjoyed the first 60%, and in particular the exploration of idealism v pragmatism, and always feel more connected to stories set in Australia.

[J 🌺]

A couple torn apart by ideals, find themselves back in each others’ lives on opposite ends of a groundbreaking story. This book has all the ingredients needed to be a gripping, exciting and messy tale of love and what it means to be true to yourself in a world that is increasingly grey. Unfortunately, it never really lives up to the promise. It should have been more exciting, uncovering falsehoods, catching people in their lies and putting the puzzle pieces together alongside our MCs - but the writing was flat and frankly a little uninteresting.
Sadly, there was little to no chemistry between the two leads as well - making it extremely unbelievable that they’d both be as hung up over each other even years after a very anti-climatic breakup. The love story, which the book hinges on, fell flat.
Overall, the story had all the right beats set in place but didn’t land - wish it was more fleshed out.

[Maxim Shanahan]

I had such a fantastic time reading this

[Chloe Marks]

3.5 ⭐️

I really loved the writing of this book and found myself not wanting to put it down. However, if you work in the law, the legal drama and process are a bit jarring! I will say this is the first book I’ve read that to has somehow been able to weave in FOI and procurement lol

[Sandra]

A very easy read with an interesting premise, especially around the ideas of 'good intentions' and how much of our values we sacrifice without realising.

My main qualms with this novel is:
1) that all the side characters were somehow much more interesting than the main characters and
2) everything was used too much to serve the plot rather than build relationships or characterisation.

So much was packed into so little time that key events happened without much build up. Which works for a Netflix movie, not so much for a novel.

Will always enjoy the student journalism aspects #nostalgia (more Ariana mentions needed though), although I will admit I was initially confused by the window mention in the student newspaper basement office.

[Alice Roundhill]

I enjoyed the main characters and setting of this book, and liked that the key conflict was based on their personal moral compasses and how that impacts your career/ job choices. But I felt there was too much focus and detail on the cases they did, giving up time to actually develop the characters a bit further.

[Gavan]

Entertaining but disappointing. The story is great: two idealists at Uni break a bit corruption story but then go their separate ways afterwards - one into journalism & the other into corporate finance - only to intersect again later in life. Really good concept. And the characters are quite well drawn - just the right amount of angst about "doing the right thing". But there were aspects I found simply annoying because they lacked credibility & hence distracted from an otherwise good story (e.g. an investigative journalist accessing bank account & payroll records; then being allowed by the internal lawyers to publish extracts from them).

[Annabelle Stelzer]

Started very strong but the ending really lost me. Went from very character driven to very plot driven and I just could not find myself caring about the legal case. Felt unnecessary and would’ve much preferred if the ending focussed on the characters and their relationship or lack thereof

[Danny Cash]

Was provided an advance copy by Pan Macmillan - and boy was I glad to read this. Pacy, punchy, profound. Good Intentions is modern. Looking away from it is difficult. Jessy Wu gives us a story about love and friendship and Sydney and youth and maturing. The characters stay with you after reading. The central questions - about how we are to act in a world that incentivises looking the other way - are hard to shake. I loved this book so much.