Book Review: Good Me, Bad Me

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We are delighted to start working in collaboration with Michael Joseph - Penguin UK (Publishers) through Net Gallery. We were pre approved, to read and provide an open and honest review in return for a copy of this book. We always delay posting reviews until just before the book is published.

This is the first books we have read and reviewed for Penguin. Good Me, Bad me is written by Ali Land and is to be published on 12th January.

Many thanks to Net Gallery, Michael Joseph - Penguin UK and Ali Land for the advance copy of this book in exchange for an open and honest review.

Our Review






Annie, a teenager, has just moved in to a foster home. She has taken a new name, identity and is joining a new school. Annie becomes Milly. The family she moves in with have a daughter the same age, a mother and also a father who is a psychologist and works with Milly to prepare for her mother's trial.

Previously Annie lived with her mother. Annie believes her mother is a serial killer and is a witness to her latest murder. She reports her mother to the police and prepares to give evidence against her. The newspapers are covering her mother's story and Milly is concerned and desperate not to be like her mother and be good, but she is the daughter of a murderer. This causes much turmoil, sleepless nights and concern for Milly.

What makes this book Different?

The story is told through the eyes of Milly, a teenager who is in foster care and she shares her feelings on settling in with a new family. How she feels and copes with starting a new school and feeling isolated, fights herself not to become like her mother and be good, seeing details of her mother's forth coming trial in newspapers and how she feels preparing for a court case and giving evidence against her mother.
All the above parts of the book make for good enjoyable reading and the story moves quickly. There are a few psychological twists, as the story builds.
This book does cover some sensitive and difficult topic - murder and abuse of children. Had I been looking for a book to read and picked this up in a supermarket and noticed this topic, I would have put it back. However:

Am I glad to have read it? Yes. Why? There is not alot of detail about the abuse or murders. And what is contained in the book, can be left unread without losing the story. I skipped paragraphs to avoid reading anything.
Would I have preferred for the topic not to have been there - Yes definitely.
Please note: This is a personal preference of mine. Not everyone will feel the same but to give an open and honest review I need to include this.


This is Ali Land's debut novel, and I have a feeling it will not be the last we hear from this author. Despite the sensitive topic, this book makes for an addictive read.

We have also been approved to read Sister Sister by Sue Fortin, for Harper Collins UK, this book review will be posted later this week and is due for publication on 6th January!

Serendipity Loves xx

Thank you Netgalley and Penguin Michael Joseph for an ARC of this novel for an honest review.

Milly, real name Annie has been placed in care after her mothers arrest for a series of child murders. Only 15 herself and dealing with the fallout of her own abuse and feelings of guilt she needs help and a safe place to live whilst waiting for her mothers trial where she will be the star witness as it was she who informed the police what her mother had been doing. Unfortunately for her the family she is placed with has many of their own demons to deal with. And the daughter Phoebe hates Milly on sight and sets out, not knowing or caring about Millys history to make her life hell.

This is told in the first person and is both disturbing and heart breaking. Milly is a complex character who struggles to keep her mothers voice from her mind. One of the things I liked about the book was although disturbing we are not subjected to graphic descriptions of what Millys mother did. We are given enough information to understand the evil that she has endured. And crucially the writer is emphatic enough to make Milly both easy to sympathise with and to be a little scared of.

A tense and dark thriller, an easy 5 stars.

Millie is a new foster child in the care of Mike, a psychiatrist, and his wife Saskia, she has been placed with them because Mike is helping her cope with the trauma she has been through. Millie is not her real name and she is a key witness in the trial of her mother, a female serial killer of young children. However Millie is haunted by the presence of her mother and the fear that she too is wicked. When her foster parents' daughter Phoebe starts bullying her Millie is afraid of the consequences.

The synopsis of this book sounds terribly hysterical and overwrought and indeed the plot sometimes veers very close to that. However it never crosses over and remains scarily believable all the way to the last twist. Land has created a character that inspires revulsion and pity all the way through the book, a girl abused and trying to sort out her life, and I was completely hooked. I can't say that I found the final few pages a satisfying conclusion because I didn't, but I'm not sure what Land could have done to end this book given the plot lines leading up to it.

I was interested in this book as psychological thrillers is one of my favourite genres. I obtained a copy of this from Penguin UK( Michael Joseph) for an independent honest review for NetGalley. It did not disappoint. Annie has given the police evidence against her mother and is waiting for the upcoming trial. She has been given a new identity and is living with a foster family. Annie is the narrator, and we gain a clear understanding of what her mother has been accused of and the effects it has had on her. The characters in the foster family are introduced and personally didn't like any of them, which is praise to the good charazcterisations developed by the author.I don't personally feel this family was a suitable choice fgor Annie, this however adds to the drama of the plot. I was totally drawn in from very early on wanting to know more. At times, especvially when we are at the court case the reading can be somewhat disturbing, although this is a work of fiction, the acts carried out can well relate to real life. There is a subplot when Annie makes friends with another girl who also has a poor home life and I would have liked this to have been developed a little more with some sort of conclusion however a minor personal opinion.
I gave this 4.5* as it was excellent writing, gripping and so good for a debut novel.The court case and the ending could have been stronger, and I did guess the ending so in comparison to other similar books I felt I couldn't award the full 5*. Well worth reading, really enjoyed it, and I can feel a new movie in the making

This is a great book which kept me gripped so much from start to finish that I read it in 24 hours.

Annie's mother is a serial killer who has murdered 9 children. After the death of the last child Annie, aged 15, told the police about her mother and is now living with a foster family under the assumed name of Milly awaiting her mother's trial at which she will be a witness. Mike and Saskia, her foster parents, know of Milly's past but their daughter Phoebe does not. Milly and Phoebe are in the same school year so spend a lot of time together. Phoebe isn't happy about Milly joining the family and makes life very difficult for her.

There were many twists and turns in the story and plenty of action to encourage page-turning. The book is written in Milly's voice, often directed to her jailed mother. It is well written so that is is always clear what dialogue is direct to those around her and what is in her head to her mother. I can recommend this book and author.

I found this a really thought provoking and insightful debut novel and I think it is destined to be one of the early hits of 2017. What makes it so good is not just the novel approach of a serial killer’s daughter, but the writing really makes you get inside Annie/Milly’s head and then, just when you think you understand her, she says something that makes you stop and wonder. This is a well plotted tale with an intense edge that really has you sitting on the edge of your seat.
Milly is undoubtedly a damaged girl – she knew what her mother was doing and she played her own part in the story that is about to be unveiled in the trial – forever the daughter of a serial killer who handed her mother over to the police.
As the trial approaches, she is living with Mike and Saskia Newmont and their daughter Phoebe. They have fostered Milly and Mike, a psychologist, is helping Milly prepare for the questioning that she will receive at trial.
As the court date nears, Milly has nightmare nights and cannot stop thinking about her mother. And it is the mother daughter relationship that is at the heart of this chilling, intense tale.
Can Milly be the perfect daughter she aspires to be? Can the good that she wants to do outweigh the bad that she has seen her mother perfect? And while she struggles to understand how to fit in with her new foster family can she see a way of holding on to their ‘normality’ in the face of opposition from the daughter, Phoebe? Milly can feel the fault lines in the Newmont’s relationships but how she deals with those will help define who she is.
Good Me, Bad Me is a cracking psychological thriller. Well written and beautifully thought through I’d be genuinely surprised if this book isn’t a smash hit.

Millie is struggling to build a new life and a new identity. Looming dark and menacing are memories of recent events which led her to leave her mother's house and finally go to the police for help. Looming even darker, are Millie's struggles with her own conscience.
As a child, she has suffered terrible abuse at the hands of her mother, but can she ever escape the darkness she feels inside and feel like other girls?
Will Millie manage to withstand the trial against her own mother, at which she will be the main witness?
To make things worse, the situation is not so straightforward with her temporary foster family. Millie is jealous of their teenage daughter. The two girls hate each other, though they are both pretty good at hiding it.
This story is a brilliant insight into the mind of Millie as she builds her new future. The question is - what sort of future will she choose?

Really enjoyed this book. Totally different to anything I've read in a while.

The main character 'Milly' has been placed with a foster family, while her mother, a serial killer waits for her trial.

There are some shocking twists and turns and I really felt for Milly as she tolerated with the two different lives she was living - the one in which she lived with her mother knowing she was a serial killer, and the one in which she feels guilty for shopping her in to the police so she can escape brutality and live a normal life.

Brilliant debut.

'NEW N A M E . NEW F A M I LY. S H I N Y. NEW. ME . ' Annie's mother is a serial killer. The only way she can make it stop is to hand her in to the police. But out of sight is not out of mind. As her mother's trial looms, the secrets of her past won't let Annie sleep, even with a new foster family and name - Milly. A fresh start. Now, surely, she can be whoever she wants to be. But Milly's mother is a serial killer. And blood is thicker than water. Good me, bad me. She is, after all, her mother's daughter... Translated into over 20 languages, Good Me Bad Me is a tour de force. In its narrator, Milly Barnes, we have a voice to be reckoned with.

I was given my ARC by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Wow. Just wow. This is my kind of book, and when a new writer pops up on the scene, I am always keen to absorb the story and see what the new author's style is like.

Land's writing style is masterful and full of suspense. I got frustrated two thirds of the way from the simple point that no matter how many pages I turned, I couldn't get to the end. I was so caught up in the threads of the storyline.

Milly's character you really do find yourself feeling sorry for. She's only 15 and already her life has been more than most people can take. She is struggling to come to terms with her life and the actions of her serial killer mother.

The book has only one weak spot as far as I am concerned and that is the way the end is constructed. Other than that, this is a brilliant book! Really well written.

A four out of five star read.

I am profoundly grateful to NetGalley and Penguin UK for my copy.

Thought this book was OK. I probably would not recommend this to friends or family. I personally found the ending predictable.

I found this book quite hard to get in to at first, the story was slow to start, and the characters had a relationship that made you like\dislike some of them in equal measure. It took me longer to get in to the story than I expected, I did get more into it as I hit the 50% mark, but I felt like I was forcing myself to pick it up on some occasions. I did enjoy the book, later on and would recommend to anyone showing an interest in this genre.

Superb story, well told from teenage Milly's point of view. She is the main character and having to live with foster parents pending a court case involving her serial killer mother. I cannot say that I enjoyed it as I found it grim and sad. The other characters could well have done with more background - especially the daughter of the foster family and her rather silly, bullying friend.

This is a very good book in which we follow the life of an abused child who went to the Police and accused her mother of abusing and murdering other children. Living with a foster family in the period until her mother's trial she has to live with a false identity and finds hostility around notwithstanding counselling and support. There is tension and emotion with inevitable deception as she make new friends etc. T he pace quickens as the trial approaches and then giving evidence and facing cross examination follows. Never pleasant but will it ever end? What is the truth? You will have to make your own judgment having read the book.

An imaginative and highly credible account of circumstances and behaviour etc. Highly Recommended..

A dark compelling book which keeps you on the edge of your seat. At times heart breaking when you learn about Millie's childhood, the years of abuse by her mother and her attempts to leave the past behind. She is a deeply troubled teenager who you can't help but warm to and will on to overcome the damage inflicted on her by the one person who should have protected her.
It's hard to say any more about the plot without giving it away but I would recommend this book to anyone who likes their thrillers uncomfortable and disturbing and where normal moral judgements are questioned.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc.

A fantastic read with a brilliant ending that I didn't see coming! Couldn't put it down once I started reading it and was sad to finish it!

Annie child with a dark past. Her mother is a serial killer who abused and murdered young children. She forces Annie to watch her, subjecting her to abuse should she refuse. She doesn;t love her daughter. Annie is merely the mask she wears for the world - respected Nurse and loving mother.

When her last victim is someone that Annie knows, someone she has played with, she realises that there is only one way to stop her mother. To report her to the police. But in doing so, her nightmare does not end as she hope it will. There is still the trial to get through and after all of the years together her mother can never truly leave her. She is always there, inside her head, mocking her for not acting sooner.

Given a new name and a new chance, Annie, now known as Milly, goes to live with a temporary foster family. Mike and Saskia seem perfect, even though Mike is a Psychologist who is determined to help Milly through her therapy, even if she doesn't feel she wants it. But their teenage daughter Phoebe is another matter. She resents Milly's presence in their home and seems determined to make her life at school as unbearable as possible, knowing that it is only a matter of time before Milly will be sent away again. With only Morgan, a young girl from a neighbouring estate, as a friend, can Milly find any kind of peace with her new family or is she destined to always be haunted by the ghosts of her past?

…

Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land is an intriguing read and probably one of the truest psychological thrillers I have read in some time. Billed as one of the biggest books of 2017, I can see why that may well be the case. The protagonist, Milly, inside whose head most of the action takes place or is recounted, is a very disturbed young girl. And who wouldn't be having been forced to live with and endure the whims of a psychopath like her mother. However, for me... Well I'm just not so sure. I wasn't when I read the book and I'm still not now. I'm kind of on the fence and for me it's a very uncomfortable place to be.

This is a very well written book. The language matches the mood and I can really picture what it must be like to be Annie/Milly, struggling to adjust to a normal life and always haunted by the things she was forced to witness. As a reader I felt both a mixture of sympathy for and also wariness of her and Ali Land has made a perfect balance in this. We are never subjected to the full gory details of what happened in her family home. There are just hints, dropped here and there, although it is clear that both Annie and her brother, who was taken from the home many years before, had been subjected to both physical and sexual abuse. The symbolism that Land uses in describing this, the imagery of the snake slithering towards Annie/Milly, is very effective. Both hypnotic and repulsive or fearsome at the same time.

The people surrounding Milly in her new life are very well established. Mike seems to have the utmost concern for her and tries hard to engage Milly and help her settle. Saskia is a woman with her own secrets, a bit of a wet lettuce who Milly soon gets the measure of, and her case worker, June, is only really on the periphery but we sense her genuine concern for Milly. Morgan is a bright young girl, rough at the edges and Milly's only real friend. She is a little feral in some respects but looks up to Milly and the friendship provides safe haven when everything starts to get too much. It is Phoebe however who has the most involvement in and impact upon Milly.

Phoebe is someone who can only really be described as vile. Perhaps you could argue that she is just an insecure teenager who is struggling with all the waifs and strays that her parents bring to her home, seemingly giving them more attention than they do her. Her relationship with Saskia is beyond tense, a complete lack of respect for her mother, and there were many times that I felt she needed some real discipline instilling as nothing she did seemed to have any repercussions. She is horrid to Milly from day one and goes out of her way to make her life miserable becoming the ring leader in a succession of increasingly cruel bullying campaigns art school. There doesn't seem to be one redeeming quality in her character and I found it difficult to care anything for what befell her.

The story is disturbing in parts, not necessarily from what is said, more from what is implied and left to the readers imagination. This is a well used tool as to describe the horror would have pushed far too many readers right out of the story. However, it also kind of didn't work for me and I think that this is why I am still so undecided on this book. For all the build up, the mental struggles that Milly went through in the build up to the trial, the bullying, the nightmares, I was somewhat underwhelmed and not entirely surprised by what came to pass. True, Milly has a very dark mind, but as I said before, what else do you expect? Nature or nurture? In truth, what is it that shapes the mind of a young child? Maybe both. In which case the end is surely inevitable? Whatever the truth, I was just left wanting more.

Another issue I had was with the way in which the story was recounted. There was some limited dialogue, but a lot of conversations were told through Milly's thoughts and memories which I found a little confusing. If she was there, present in the conversation, why was it not told as such. Lack of speech marks was something used to wonderful effect in 'The Bird Tribunal' but in that book the entire story was told this way, giving it an almost ethereal quality, taking the reader from start to finish in a dream like state. It just didn't work for me here. Perhaps it is meant to signify an element of Milly's detachment from reality, particularly when Mike is trying to provide therapy. Perhaps this is meant to be Milly's cocoon, her way to compartmentalising things she doesn't want to truly be a part of. I don't really know, but it just felt odd.

I usually avoid books that tell me they're the next big thing, or the next this or that because I hate hype and being told what I absolutely must love. Perhaps because this book has been so heavily hyped I was expecting something, I don't know, huge. For me, this wasn't it. It was still extremely well written with well developed characters and I think will appeal to many fans of true psychological thrillers and as such it gets a solid 4 stars from me.

‘Good Me Bad Me’ by Ali Land is a difficult book to review without giving anything away. It is compulsive, difficult reading, and though I raced through it I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it.
Teenager Annie is living with a foster family whilst waiting to give evidence at her mother’s trial. Her mother is accused of being a serial killer of children, Annie turned her in to the police. As she waits for the trial, Annie [now called Milly] is coached by her foster father on how to handle being in court and giving evidence under cross-examination. For Milly, there is no escaping her horrible childhood. As Mike tells her, the only way out is through. But Milly isn’t telling Mike everything.
Milly’s identity is secret, her name false, her reason for being fostered is fabricated. In this world of officially-approved lies, Milly must face her memories of what happened: what is real, and not-real. What did her mother really do? What did Milly do? At times of stress – and there are many as she fits into a foster family with an unwelcoming teenage daughter – Milly hears the voice of her mother in her head, encouraging her to be controlling, to be nasty. This is the ‘good me, bad me’ of the title. Of course every person is a mixture of light and dark, what matters is the decisions we make. Will Milly be able to let go of her past and make a new life?
Covering the few tense weeks in the run-up to the trial, ‘Good Me Bad Me’ is a turbulent emotional read. One minute I thought ‘please don’t do that, Milly’, the next I was indignant on Milly’s behalf at some of her foul treatment at the hands of school friends. The picture of teenagers, girls selfish and taunting, boys over-sexualised, is not an easy-read. You will make up your own mind whether to like Milly and whether to believe her.
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