Review: 'Good me bad me' by Ali Land

Title: Good me bad me

Writer: Ali Land

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 338

Year: 2017

IBSN-13: 978-1250087645

Price: 9.11€ (Paperback in Amazon)

Mark: 10/10

SYNOPSIS

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.

PERSONAL ASSESSMENT

JUSTIFICATION

When one of my friends (Marta, the one that also writes in this blog) travelled to London I asked her to bring me a book from there. Up to her. So, she brought me this book, I didn’t want to read nothing about it (just the blurb) because I would like it to surprise me. And indeed, it did.

PLOT

Milly (Annie) is the daughter of a murderer of children. She was the one that escaped one day, after the death of a child, went to the police and reported all that her mother did. Because she did not only kill nine children, she also abused and harmed her. She is sent to a foster family until the trial is held. That family is a bit unstructured. They mother, Saskia, cheat on her husband, Mike. Mike is very kind with Milly, although it is thus for a secret reason… And their daughter, Phoebe, does not accept Milly, she has been all her life pushed aside by the fosters children their parents had taken in. She spends all those days bullying Milly and, somehow, she discovers who Milly is and she is planning to do something… Meanwhile, Milly struggles to overcome all that had happened, and still fights in her head with her mother, she still hears her. She tries to be normal. Once the trial passed, things starts to crumble, and it unleash a hard situation for everyone.

CHARACTERS

• Milly: she is suffering an internal war trying to be normal, to seem normal and to overcome her mother’s ghost. She thinks that she must reject her for what she has done to her, but Milly still loves her mother, it is not so easy to renounce to her. Her psychological description is so good, and you suffer her same anguish.
• Phoebe: she didn’t suffer as much as Milly, but despite having money, her life was not easy. She believes that her parents do not love her (as any teenager can think) but with an aggravating factor, they are always taking in foster children, taking care of them and forgetting her. All that she does bullying the girls in her school (and Milly), she takes drugs, drinks and everything, is just because she wants a bit of attention.

ATMOSPHERE

Ali gets you to fully immerse into the story, she creates the perfect scenery for making you forget your real world and submerge in the world of Milly, so full of incomprehension, of lack of love. We all can feel the same teen problems, but these are doubled, as we are not only witness of a bullying situation, but also observe her struggling between forgetting her mother or embracing her memory.

WRITING STYLE

If we research into the author’s life we find out that she is not a writer (she has no studies on that subject, I of course know that that is not necessary to be a good writer, as in this case) but she has a degree in mental health. Now we begin to understand why the psychological descriptions are so great. She gets to describe the mental issues of Milly with an incredibly mastery. Not anybody can describe better than her the problems of Milly, of Phoebe, of her parents, because they may appear the perfect family from the outside but, inside they are a dysfunctional family.

GENERAL COMMENT

It seems just another teen’s story with a bit of bullying, injustice, but it is not. Because she is the daughter of a murderer. But the important thing in this novel is the everlasting fight between what she wants to be and what she thinks she will be, between the good her and the bad her. She wants to be a normal girl, just another teenager (even though all the obstacles she found on her path) but the fathom of her mother flies around her and stop her to behave as she wants. Who will win this battle?

-Saru