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Good Me Bad Me: A Novel Kindle Edition
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER AND THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S EDITORS' CHOICE
HOW FAR DOES THE APPLE REALLY FALL FROM THE TREE?
Good Me Bad Me is dark, compelling, voice-driven psychological suspense by debut author Ali Land: "Could not be more unputdownable if it was slathered with superglue." —Sunday Express
Milly’s mother is a serial killer. Though Milly loves her mother, the only way to make her stop is to turn her in to the police. Milly is given a fresh start: a new identity, a home with an affluent foster family, and a spot at an exclusive private school.
But Milly has secrets, and life at her new home becomes complicated. As her mother’s trial looms, with Milly as the star witness, Milly starts to wonder how much of her is nature, how much of her is nurture, and whether she is doomed to turn out like her mother after all.
When tensions rise and Milly feels trapped by her shiny new life, she has to decide: Will she be good? Or is she bad? She is, after all, her mother's daughter.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFlatiron Books
- Publication dateSeptember 5, 2017
- File size3033 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Debut author Ali Land is devious: She only hints at the horrors Milly experienced, forcing the reader to fill in the gaps. A brief scene in which Milly dissects a pig heart in biology class includes the chilling, almost throwaway line, “I know a lot about a person’s insides.” Milly wants her “good me” aspect to win, but relentless bullying at school, her unhealthy friendship with another lost teen, and the pressure of testifying against her mother gnaw at Milly, allowing her darker instincts to ooze through her defenses. Your own impulses will veer between wanting to protect Milly and dreading what she’s capable of. Readers will have differing reactions to the ending, so when you’ve finished Good Me Bad Me, swiftly hand it over to a friend so you can unravel the conclusion together. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review
Review
“Unnerving... Land is a mental health nurse who has worked with traumatized children, and her portrait of Milly has a powerful sense of authenticity.”
―New York Times Book Review
“A terrific voyage into the teenage psyche…Land has written an intense, insightful first novel; its believable characters caught up in realistic situations will make the reader think more deeply about teenage mental health. Fans of Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why will enjoy this book immensely.”
―Library Journal, starred review
“A deliberate pace and a skillfully woven plot conspire to create a visceral read that’s at once a gripping psychological thriller and a devastating exploration of the damage wrought by childhood trauma.”
―Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Fall's most delicious thriller... A gripping psychological suspense that will captivate your imagination from the first page to the last.”
―Redbook
“The fifteen-year-old narrator of Ali Land’s Good Me Bad Me has a lot in common with Lisbeth Salander… This remarkable debut...will grip you to the very end. Good Me Bad Me is a strong, assured, very special psychological thriller.”
―Open Letters Monthly
“Good Me, Bad Me hooked me from the start. The writing is clear and direct, but also has a quiet sort of elegance to it,and an almost musical lilt...Keeps up a delightfully tense atmosphere that had me turning the pages until the early hours of the morning...I was enthralled with the suspense and intrigue, and think fans of famed author Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects might find their next favorite read in this exciting debut.”
―BookBrowse
“Part of the fun of reading a book like Ali Land’s Good Me Bad Me is the anticipation of what’s to come... Fortunately, Land delivers on all accounts… Land expertly captures the angst and trauma of teenage adolescence through Milly’s compelling narrative voice. The result is a starkly realized and haunting thriller.”
―BookPage
“A sense of creeping dread drives the narrative, and that most fascinating of crime-novel subjects, the female serial killer, casts a formidable shadow…Readers will be more than happy to go along for the ride and may be surprised how they feel about the conclusion, proving the unmistakable spell that Land has cast. Sly, unsettling, and impossible to put down.”
―Kirkus
“Land coolly ratchets up tension and takes the reader into a damaged mind, exploring the question of nature versus nurture, and the possibility of redemption. Good Me Bad Me is a heartbreaking, breathtaking chill of a book.”
―Shelf Awareness
“The kind of unreliable narrator who has fascinated readers of The Girl on the Train and other such novels....A gripping tale in the cutting voice of a teen antiheroine.”
―Booklist
“An intensely compelling exploration of nature versus nurture wrapped up in a page-turning psychological thriller. Darkly disturbing and beautifully written.”
―Sarah Pinborough, New York Times bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes
“Original and compelling - what a sensational debut!”
―Clare Mackintosh, New York Times bestselling author of I Let You Go
“A gripping, psychological rollercoaster, Good Me Bad Me is an unputdownable read that will leave readers wondering just how much control they have over their own fate.”
―Buzzfeed
“Who’s going to be the next Gillian Flynn or Paula Hawkins or Ruth Ware? Ali Land, that’s who....Reader, I was enthralled.”
―CriminalElement.com
“Engrossing thriller.”
―Today.com
“Good Me Bad Me is a novel that explodes off the page, with beautifully drawn characters and carefully executed pace. Heart rending, engrossing and ultimately terrifying, you'll be thinking about it a long time after you've turned the final page.”
―Rowan Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Book
“Unbelievably good, utterly gripping.”
―Jill Mansell, internationally bestselling author of Rumor Has It
“Good Me Bad Me is utterly compelling. Ali Land writes with such clarity, and such imagination, you will fall into her world on the very first page and find yourself unable to leave. An extraordinary and breath-taking debut.”
―Joanna Cannon, bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep
“Good Me Bad Me is an astonishing debut - technically sophisticated and emotionally heart wrenching. So many things are done well - the status jungle of girls school, the psychological dissonance of a dysfunctional family, the internal machinery of damaged children. I thought it was wonderful.”
―Helen Callaghan, internationally bestselling author of Dear Amy
“Ten pages into Good Me Bad Me, I became an Ali Land fan. Her beautiful, intimate voice immediately tugged me into the heart and mind of a serial killer's daughter and then wouldn't let go. Is there hope for this teenager's new life outside of her mother's horror? Original, intense, and utterly compelling, Good Me Bad Me is not just a terrific thriller but a psychological dive into a young girl's soul. It takes subtlety and perfect balance to maintain a dark tale like this, and Land never once stutters or makes you look away.”
―Julia Heaberlin, internationally bestselling author of Black-Eyed Susans
“An astoundingly compelling thriller. Beyond tense. You hardly breathe. Best read in ages.”
―Matt Haig, author of The Humans and Reasons to Stay Alive
“Intelligent and disturbing, Good Me Bad Me had me hooked from the first page.”
―Debbie Howells, author of The Bones of You
“Milly's voice is gripping and shocking. This is a book you will want to discuss with everyone you know.”
―Claire Douglas, author of The Sisters and Local Girl Missing
“The new Girl on The Train, which was the new Gone Girl. You get the picture. This psycho-thriller by Ali Land is set to be massive.”
―CosmopolitanUK
“A gripping tale about a teenage girl waiting to give evidence at her serial-killer mother's trial. Unsettling and unforgettable.”
―Heat
“Incredible, very special.”
―Radio 4's Open Book
“Uncomfortable, shocking, and totally compelling, put this to the top of your to-read pile.”
―Sun
“Unsettling. Holds our attention from the opening page. There is so much to praise here.”
―Guardian
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B06X8ZM4M6
- Publisher : Flatiron Books (September 5, 2017)
- Publication date : September 5, 2017
- Language : English
- File size : 3033 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 293 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #624,375 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,443 in Assassination Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- #2,941 in Assassination Thrillers (Books)
- #3,514 in Psychological Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
After graduating from university with a degree in Mental Health, Ali spent a decade working as a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Nurse in both hospitals and schools in the UK and Australia. Though a voracious reader from a young age and a keen observer of the world, it took Ali over thirty years to put pen to paper but she sure is glad she did! Ali's debut novel Good Me Bad Me is an international bestseller and will be translated into twenty-two languages. It was short-listed for two Dead Good Reader Awards, short-listed by the Crime Writers Association for the John Creasey New Blood Dagger, short-listed for the Glass Bell Award for Contemporary Fiction and won Book Of The Year at Heat magazine Unmissables Awards. It's also a New York Times Editor's choice and a Richard and Judy book club pick. Ali is now a full-time writer and lives in London and is currently working on her second novel.
Follow Ali on Twitter and Instagram @byAliLand
Customer reviews
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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Milly is complicated because she feels the two sides of her warring for dominance in her behavior. If she's good, she's a victim of Phoebe's relentless bullying, if she uses her mother's teachings, she's strong and in control of her life. The question to as is how much circumstances shape us as people. This is an interesting study in how bullying affects people, especially because it's so prevalent in our society today. We have television shows that show people being bullied by bachelors/bachelorettes, getting fired from jobs, losing races and finally from sitcoms that get laughs from embarrassing the characters. Interspersed with these shows, are adds with famous people telling us how bad bullying is. Talk about not knowing what to believe.
Anyway, this book would make a great book club choice because of the discussions that could come out of it. I would recommend it for anyone who likes the subject of serial killers and their motives. Like the book Evil Genes, this book explores the motivations of the human heart and what good and evil might dwell in our hearts.
But Milly has secrets, and life at her new home becomes complicated. As her mother’s trial looms, with Milly as the star witness, Milly starts to wonder how much of her is nature, how much of her is nurture, and whether she is doomed to turn out like her mother after all.
When tensions rise and Milly feels trapped by her shiny new life, she has to decide: Will she be good? Or is she bad? She is, after all, her mother’s daughter.
My Thoughts: In Milly’s first person narrative voice, we see the world around her from her perspective, and it is a sad, emotionally devastating world.
Living in the foster home of a psychologist named Mike, one would think she would have the best care and treatment available to her, but early on I could tell that Mike had his own agenda, and he could also be clueless about his own family. His wife, Saskia, is remote and probably narcissistic, and his teenage daughter Phoebe is able to hide her feelings, her attitudes, and her behavior. Not just in a typical teenage way, but in a hurtful, pathological way.
Milly, on the other hand, proves to be adept at her own secret agenda, and as more time goes by, we see her behavior ratchet up to an extremely manipulative level as she hears her mother’s imaginary voice guiding her and reminding her that she has to make her own wishes come true.
What will Milly do to secure her future? How does Phoebe’s behavior backfire on her? And how, finally, does Milly have the last word? A chilling story, Good Me, Bad Me captured me and held me hostage for the duration. 5 stars.
Author's debut book back in 2017. Just getting around to reading after getting it on sale for $2.99 (reg 13.99). A friend, Rhondito, recommended this book and said it was slow to start but then takes off 4 Stars. I love her writing. At only 15% knew I loved the writing and loving Milly's hidden traits coming out. Almost makes it a little creepy because you don't know all the details about her mother yet. Like the slow reveal!! Could have been a 5 star review if it went on a little longer to fully finish the story. Still no second book by this author; hope she writes another one soon.
There is so much I want to say about this book but do not want to spoil it for readers. I will mention that Mike the father/psychologist is a complete ass. Suppose to be caring for a child who has had a horrific childhood was a failure in so many ways. All he wanted to do was profit off of her. His daughter is just a horrible human beinng. Such a dysfunctional family that had no right caring for any foster child especially one with severe mental issues.
This was a great first novel for Ali Land and I highly recommend it. Can not wait for her second book.
Top reviews from other countries
Good Me, Bad Me is one amazing debut novel!!! Annie’s mother is a serial killer. This book explores her life in foster care after she hands her mother to the police and how she deals with her internal conflict as to what extent she was like her mother.
Annie is an unreliable narrator and her journey as she struggles between her good and bad side makes this book all the more interesting and intense. Although I found the ending predictable, I couldn’t put this book down till the very end. Also, I absolutely love this cover!!!!
If you are looking for a psychological thriller, then this book wouldn’t disappoint you. ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75/5 stars (or round it off to 4)
The premise is startling – the daughter of a serial killer has turned in her mother to the police. Now, while she prepares to give evidence against her mother in court, 15-year-old Annie-turned-Milly is living with a foster family under a new identity to protect her from retribution by parents of the mother’s ten or so victims (all boys), along with presumably her mother and anyone else. Milly’s foster father, the well-intentioned psychologist Mike, makes a habit of rescuing children and is valiantly trying to hold his unappreciative family together: his fragile, unsuited-to-motherhood wife Saskia and their vindictive, insecure daughter Phoebe who develops an instant hatred of Milly and starts bullying her at school.
This certainly didn’t seem a very likely scenario, as there’s not many female serial killers in real life for a start, and for worker in a women’s refuge to get away with killing so many children of the women staying there implies that the police must be pretty inept. Also it did seem odd that Mike could actually have counselling sessions with Milly in his house while being her foster father – surely that would be a conflict of interest? There are credible details of court procedures and social workers though, and enough ‘realism’ to make me go along with the situation. But no matter how audacious the plot, I found myself totally immersed in Good Me, Bad Me. The story feels absolutely authentic in a psychological sense. The novel’s narrator, Annie/Milly is utterly convincing as a teenager haunted by both the choices she made in a house of horrors and by her mother, whose presence constantly returns. Much of Milly writes is addressed to a ‘You’, her absent mother. The times when her hideously transformed mother comes to ‘visit’ Milly are chilling, along with Milly’s memories of what happened in the house. (She was living alone with her mother when the boys were murdered and disposed of inside the house, all of whom were children of women from the refuge where Milly’s mother worked.)
Mercifully, Ms Land does not go into much explicit detail concerning the torture and murder of the boys, beyond occasional references (‘the playground’; ‘little somethings’). The restraint is effective, as is the gradual revealing of what most troubles and nags at Annie/Milly. She asks herself, can I ever overcome the influence of my mother – and which version of me will triumph, the good me or the bad me?
Very cleverly, the author kept me in suspense and constantly changing my mind over which path she would take. As Milly befriends another neglected girl who comes from a council estate, whose poverty is in contrast to the foster family’s middleclass privilege, the full meaning of the ‘good me’ and the ‘bad me’ seems to become concrete, ramping up the tension.
There are fascinating ideas at the heart of Good Me, Bad Me. How likely is the child of psychopath likely to have similar tendencies, whether through genes or upbringing? Can such a child ever hope to be ‘normal’? Is there ever a real choice to be made between the paths of good and evil, or this something predestined or beyond choice?
The voice of Milly grabbed me the most about this novel. In simple, often fractured prose, it stunningly conveys the complexity of a girl who cannot escape the relationship with her mother – her desperate need to belong and be loved, her loyalty yet ambivalence towards her mother, her guilt through being made complicit in her mother’s terrible crimes…
I could relate to Milly as she tried to do the right thing, while fending off the memories of being brought up by an abusive, self-absorbed mother. And then I felt the rug being pulled away. Milly is an unreliable narrator par excellence, withholding information and her real emotions from both her foster father/counsellor, the art teacher who encourages her, the girl she befriends, the cruel Phoebe and just about everyone around her – as well as the reader, we come to realise as Milly dispenses just enough of the truth to tease and mislead.
Highly recommended for lovers of ultra-dark psychological novels. It’s the second ‘evil mother novel’ I’ve read recently (the other being the wonderful Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine), and of the two Good Me, Bad Me definitely wins the most chilling mother award.