Good Me Bad Me

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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.” I thought the events at the school with the bullying were very true to life and realistic and though most characters were very unlikeable they were excellently portrayed. This is an outstanding debut novel. I highly recommend it to fans of psychological thrillers, especially. This one will mess with your mind and conscience, all at once, and I promise, despite all the comparisons to the ‘girl’ books, this one is unlike anything you’ve encountered, blowing all the coattail riders in this category right out of the water. Good Me, Bad Me is not for everyone. There isn’t much action, as the majority of the book the reader is in Milly’s head learning about what she is thinking and feeling vs.what she did with her mom and what her mom did to her. Since I tend to like books with twisted and disturbing characters and stories, this one worked for me!

The terrorizing at school starts to get worse. But Milly won't tell anyone. I was a bit frustrated with how everyone in Milly's life seemed oblivious to what was happening.The Interpersonal Circumplex presented here is a model developed by Donald Kiesler in 1982 and operationalized in the Impact Message Inventory (IMI). A thorough and authoritative history of related research is available in his book: Contemporary Interpersonal Theory Research: Personality, Psychopathology, and Psychotherapy, 1996. But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes.”

John, like all of us, was born into a family and social-cultural milieu. It was a ready-made context in which his caregivers lived and had become a couple. They, like John, had developed an identity and personality over time under the influence of their significant others. As a couple, his parents formed their own identity as a nuclear family, much of it influenced by norms and values they shared with a well-educated, middle-class majority population on the East Coast of the United States. Right way, I knew this journey was headed down a dark, twisted path. I read with increasing trepidation, as Milly’s harrowing story unfolds. Milly’s mother, a female serial killer, whose voice is always running in Milly’s mind, planting seeds of doubt, is absolutely chilling. Good Me, Bad Me is one those strange books where the beginning and end are kinda meh, but the middle is fantastic. The story opens with a brilliant premise: Teenaged Annie turns her serial killer mother in to the police. Afterwards she’s given a new identity-- Milly--and is sent to live with her London psychologist, Mike Newmont, and his family. There Milly will be prepped for trial and attend school with Mike’s troubled daughter Phoebe. Mike and his wife, Saskia, are aware of Milly’s true identity. Phoebe is not. And it’s that deception that proves integral to the plot. Phoebe wages a brutal war against an innocent Milly. As their war reaches a fever pitch, Milly will discover whether she can escape her mother’s nature--adhere to her own goodness--or if blood does inevitably out. The question is WHO is the daughter of the famous Peter Pan killer? Does she follow in Peter Pan's footsteps or can she embrace her "normal" life of Milly?In the beginning we meet Milly, who used to be called Annie. We also find out that her mother was arrested for killing children, 9 children..and Annie was the one who put her away. As a result of this arrest, Milly (formerly known as Annie) moves in with a foster family to prepare for the upcoming trial and to attempt a new life without her Mom. They send her home and tell her to act normal, that they're going to come that night. She's terrified they won't come but also terrified that they will...

I usually prefer character driven novels over plot driven ones. OBSESSION, by Amanda Robson, is one of my favorite new character driven novels. But, after reading GOOD ME BAD ME, I realize I do like a bit more plot and action in a novel. A tidal wave of blue uniforms scattered throughout our house. Guns held in praying hands, flat against their chests. The thrill of the search, along with the terror of the truth, etched in equal measure on their faces. In the meantime, Milly speaks to her counselors and the prosecution. They go over the murders and what Milly witnessed. She describes what her mother called “the playground.” This was a special room at home where she mutilated and killed young children. She also frequently tortured Milly in there. Land doesn’t describe the murders or child abuse in detail; rather, everything is implied. Sexual assault is also implied.Of course this perked my interest because my social work/therapist side is peeking it's head out. I definitely thought I had this story played out BUT boy was I wrong. That will teach me ;) He’s been told he must get “tougher,” but that’s proven difficult. And recently, under escalating stress and strain, he’s lost his cool and shut down at times. It was not like the John they knew, and it unsettled his team. These episodes signaled to his boss and his team that he was feeling overwhelmed, maybe in over his head. But because he is likable, loyal, and long-tenured, he was given a chance to work with a coach to see if he could turn things around. Diagnosis