Genre: thriller, mystery
Publishing House: Penguin
Date of publication: 2017
Number of pages: 338
Rating:
I bought the book from Okian.
'I made you some tea.'
She nods but doesn't move from where she's sat on the edge of the bed.
'Shall I leave it there for you?'
She nods again, I place it on the dressing table, her eyes fill up with tears. Kindess when you're wounded hurts more.
Good Me, Bad Me is hard to be put into words, because of what a gruesome, violent and disturbingly real story it sheds. I read a lot of thrillers, but none like this one. The POV of a serial killer's children hooked me even since the first page. The whole book is utterly astonishing, you can't (and don't want) to put it down.
I told the story again. And again. And again. Same story. Different faces watched, different ears listened. I told them everything.
Well.
Almost everything.
Milly is a very mysterious creature, and yet I still got attached to her. Because the narrator is subjective, we can't know whether or not she's telling the whole truth. But, despite of everything, Milly's desire to be good seemed sincere to me. She was always frightened that maybe 'the bad' is in her DNA, and she has no escape, but she still tried.
Some people believe that the man is the product of his environment. Then how could Milly have any chance at a normal life? She was born in a family where she never learned kindness, only violence and manipulation. Her life doesn't get better either after she moves with a foster family. Her new sister Phoebe makes sure that she has a miserable life.
'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' Life is hard enough already for Milly as the new girl in town, with her mother in prison, and the trial awaiting, but it only gets worse when Phoebe starts to bully Milly at school, and persuade everybody to do the same. That's what was really difficult for me to read, the way people are willing to hate a person they barely know. The way they are willing to humiliate someone just to feel better about themselves, to feel like they belong.
Behind a bully is always an insecure person, and Phoebe was no exception. And I'm not trying to deny her problems at all, but let's face it, mostly she was just a drama queen. That girl who has the perfect life and it's still not enough for her somehow. This character was pitiful in every way, but it failed to sensitize me in any way.
However, in these book there are slightly creepier things than a bully. For example, Milly's mother, the serial killer. And what is the most disturbing thing about her (besides the fact that she killed 9 children and was planning to kill the 10th) is that she was a nurse. People trusted her with theirs lives, and still, all she wanted to do was to manipulate them, and steal the lives of innocent kids. Even if that book is a work of fiction, there are MANY, like MANY cases of nurses serial killers in real life.
More disturbing than hurt is love when it's wrong.
Everybody agreed that Milly's mother was a monster. But Milly couldn't forget that this monster raised her, and that, this monster sometimes played with her hair and took care of her when she was sick. I think the worst kind of love is to love somebody that did such horrible things. Because that was what Milly did. She loved her mother, despite everything, and that part was a heartbreaker for me.
But this beautiful book, with such complex characters and intriguing story is also a puzzle. Will you be able to assemble it before it's too late and somebody else dies?
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