Title- Good Me, Bad Me
Author- Ali Land
Published- August 10th 2017
Genre- Fiction, thriller, crime, YA
Length- 352 pages
Rating- 3/5
Synopsis (Goodreads) – Good Me Bad Me is dark, compelling, voice-driven psychological suspense by debut author Ali Land.
How far does the apple really fall from the tree?
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.
Review – I received this from the publisher so thank you to them.
Technically this doesn’t seem to be classified as YA on Amazon etc as far as I can see but it definitely is. The main character is a teenager, the writing is very simplistic, lots of chat about things at school and other teen things, definite YA as far as I am concerned. I generally don’t like YA much but I like this more than most, perhaps because although the standard YA teen issues were there, they weren’t the main focus of the book.
Overall, it’s an ok book, but I wouldn’t go nuts for it. It’s a bit of a slow burn which generally isn’t my thing and lot of things are left unfinished, lots is hinted at but there is no explanation. It doesn’t come across as having been done to add suspense to the story either, it comes across as the author just not being able to finish the thought, it’s as though she just didn’t bother to decide what the mother was meant to have done. That probably means the author isn’t a psychopath which is good at least, with some really sick stories I do wonder about the people that write them.
The characters are all fine, obvious stereotypes really but I didn’t particularly mind, I just didn’t really feel attached to any of them.
As with any thriller there is a twist, literally on the last page here, the problem though? It was so obvious, you would have to be blind not to see it coming.
The overall idea is an interesting one, which is why I give it a 3/5, it just feels so incomplete. If you like basic thrillers it’s good enough, but some people might find the subject matter upsetting, the lack of complete thoughts helps with that though.
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