Good Me Bad Me

Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land

This was a much darker story than I was expecting, as I don’t like to know too much about a book before reading it. It is a bravely disturbing approach compared to most other novels at the moment that claim to be psychological thrillers but

are actually more like domestic noir or even chick-lit with a small amount of tension in the plot. Good Me Bad Me is the real deal and very distressing in places.

The narrator, Milly, is a disturbed, continually shifting character and you never know what she is capable of or how dark her past really is until the very end of the book, which delivers a powerful and, to me, very unexpected ending.

Though the book paints a vivid picture of a fractured foster family - and a very fraught school experience for the inscrutable Milly - Land trims away most of the unnecessary details of endless domestic routines and instead concentrates on Milly’s character and state of mind - who is she, really? How culpable is she for the pitch-black events of her childhood? Is she lying to herself or everyone else? Or both? This mystery is kept up right until the end of the book.

The reason this is a true psychological thriller is that it focuses mainly on the main character’s psyche rather than outside events. It also avoids many of the clichés of the genre - the mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night; the anonymous packages left on the doorstep; the stranger/strange car following the female protagonist in the street, which disappears following a momentary distraction. All these are tossed out in favour of taut, focused suspense that is maintained throughout the book.

So, overall, Good Me Bad Me is a surprising, twisty and pleasingly dark tale that plays on the mind long afterwards and stands out amongst the current crop of lightweight psychological thrillers and delivers a grown-up story that will delight those looking for something genuinely dark and different.