Starred Review. A deliberate pace and a skillfully woven plot conspire to create a visceral read that's at once a gripping psychological thriller and a devastating exploration of the damage wrought by childhood trauma. Beautiful, pure things make me feel ugly. Tarnished. I remember asking you when I was three, maybe four, where I came from. I waited for you to sweep me up, rub our noses together in an Eskimo kiss and reply, you came for me, you belong with me, I love you. But you didn't respond, you walked out of the kitchen left me standing there alone" After graduating from university with a degree in Mental Health, Ali Land spent a decade working as a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Nurse in both hospitals and schools in the UK and Australia. Ali is now a full-time writer and lives in West London. Good Me Bad Me is an astonishing debut - technically sophisticated and emotionally heart wrenching. So many things are done well - the status jungle of girls school, the psychological dissonance of a dysfunctional family, the internal machinery of damaged children. I thought it was wonderful. 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.

Richard and Judy Introduce Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land Richard and Judy Introduce Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land

Why do you think the author chose a female serial killer who is also a mother? Are bad women somehow worse than bad men? I used to tell the kids I looked after, ‘Just do your best and don’t forget to breathe,’ and that’s what’s next for me as I begin the journey of writing the difficult second novel. It’s a thriller set on a scarcely inhabited Scottish island where young twins – who have grown up in complete isolation – become fascinated by a group of newcomers on a training expedition. There are secrets aplenty, and as the end of summer looms a dark undercurrent threatens to rise, shattering the idyll of island life forever. The developmental solution for John is a longer story than can be told here. It may suffice for the moment to say that his developmental priorities involved reclaiming access to all his experience - Good Me, Bad Me, and Not Me. It involved learning to see what he experiences with an attitude of curiosity by suspending the subjective judgment implied in Good, Bad, or Not Me. This is not to imply amorality, but it does imply a more pragmatic attitude that looks at the cost of living within such a constricted range of options for action.

Media Reviews

Ali Land’s psychological thriller, Good Me, Bad Me (2017), follows a young girl who finds out that her mother is probably a serial killer and that she must testify against her mother at trial. The novel received an overwhelmingly positive reception from critics upon publication, and reviewers comment on its unique voice and narrative style. An English writer, Good Me, Bad Me is Land’s debut novel. She worked as a child and adolescent mental health nurse in the UK and Australia for more than 10 years. A pulse-pounding psychological thriller about a serial killer narrated by those closest to him: His 13-year-old daughter, his girlfriend—and the one victim he has spared

Good Me Bad Me author Ali Land An interview with Good Me Bad Me author Ali Land

I told the story again. And again. Same story. Different faces watched, different ears listened. I told them everything. Good Me, Bad Me takes place in England. Fifteen-year-old Annie lives with her mother who terrifies her. She doesn’t have many friends because she’s too scared to bring people home. Her mother is a vicious murderer who tortures and kills people in the family home. Despite loving her mother, Annie calls the police because she can’t take it anymore. How far does the apple really fall from the tree when the daughter of a serial killer is placed with a new, normal foster family? Room meets Dexter in this dark, voice-driven psychological suspense. Annie is a damaged 15-year-old. She is the daughter of a child serial killer and she helped the police catch her. The court case is now looming, and she must give evidence against her mother. The story is very well developed to provide a tense atmosphere with that edge of suspicion and apprehension that Annie was either more involved or will repeat what her nature may preordain. How alike is Annie to her Mother, does the apple fall far from the tree? Is she GOOD or BAD? 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.

When Annie informs the police of this at the tender age of only 15 you can gasp and feel her emotions. But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes.’ Though I finished this book before its publication on September 5, 2017, I just couldn’t decide how to sum up it up without spoilers while relating my enjoyment of this book. Allegory and symbolisms abound with frequent, sly, and carefully orchestrated references to ‘Lord of the Flies’ and ‘Peter Pan’, which I will leave for you to draw your own conclusions.

Good Me Bad Me - Macmillan

Our initial assessment yielded a profile (in the IC graphic), which was shaped by patterns of interaction within his family of origin and beyond. Up until now, these tendencies in John’s personality had served him well. Although his promotion to manager a year ago was not what he aspired to, he couldn’t help but feel flattered. Management’s decision to promote him was largely influenced by their appreciation for his experience and reputation for getting along with people including customers and colleagues.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. While Norma was listening to this story and was lost in the unstable mind of Milly and her thoughts the rest of us were overwhelmed with the constant bullying from the mean girls which left us feeling exhausted and really sad at how mean they really were. There is a lot going on within this story and many topics touched on here that for us overshadowed the creepiness and distracted us from the struggles going on in Milly’s mind. For the Twisted Sister Norma it was a very different experience as she really got into the minds of the characters as the narrator of the audiobook was absolutely brilliant and really showed how creepy and disturbing these characters really were. Overall, I think this novel is one of the best psychological thrillers I’ve read this year. It might not be for everyone, but upon much reflection, I think the story is more troubling that it appears on the surface, which is weighty enough, but it also opens up a plethora of questions and endless ‘what if’ scenarios, that kept my brain buzzing deep into the night.

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Amazingly, Annie turns her mother into the police. Of course Annie is taken into the foster care system and is now living under the new identify of "Milly" with her foster family. In a pressured situation like this, development works best when it’s supported by management. John might need more people, but he also needs some intensive training, mentoring, and coaching. And when this intervention is tied to getting his whole team functioning better, and if it’s approached systemically and inter-departmentally, both John and the company are better served. Notes: Good Me Bad Me” was a creepy and captivating character study of Milly, in addition to being a psychological thriller. Though it was obvious to me how it would end - almost from the start, I found the novel entertaining and was glued to it from the beginning. The character of Milly was fascinating and I couldn’t help but be completely riveted by her. This is a novel that I enjoyed but can’t quite say that I loved. Perhaps because I found it somewhat predictable, perhaps because it just missing a little something, I’m not quite sure. On the whole, I think “Good Me Bad Me” is an impressive debut by Ali Land and I look forward to seeing what comes out with next. The style of writing can be slightly unusual at times with extremely short sentences, but this is because we are reading Annie's thoughts. This can result in making it feel unnerving at times with the jagged way she thinks, but it's a clever method of constructing an unsettling atmosphere.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. Her new foster family. Her foster dad, Mike is a psychologist, an expert in trauma. Saskia, her foster-mother just wants to make her feel at home. The Newmonts look like a fantastic family and are they very welcoming..... The teddy bear on the front peppered red with blood. I could have brought more, so many to choose from. She never knew I kept them. This book is a work of twisted genius. It is going to be HUGE. Watch out for Ali Land' Bryony Gordon