Good Me Bad Me: A Novel

Wholly unsettling and compulsively readable, Good Me, Bad Me is an impressive debut thriller from Ali Land. After turning her mother in to the police for murdering nine children, Annie is placed in the care of a troubled foster family: psychologist dad, adulterous addict mother, and wildly jealous daughter. Living under the alias Milly, Annie tries to live a normal life at home and at school; however, persistent bullying from her foster sister, Phoebe, is insufferable, and the stress of her mother’s trial is taking its toll. Not to mention, given the serial-killer ways of her mother, Annie fears the evil that may lurk inside her.

Good Me, Bad Me is a carefully crafted psychological narrative that exudes creepiness from start to finish. Land has a penchant for detail, often wielding language to portray the hideous and frightening as eerily ordinary. Laced throughout the novel are shattering asides that smartly give voice to Milly’s most disturbing thoughts. With an ending that may or may not satisfy everyone, most readers will nonetheless find it impossible to resist Milly’s hauntingly gripping account.