For more of my book reviews, plenty of awesome books to win, author interviews and features come over to join me for book fun at: https://www. 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 Lindsay and Brenda they were unable to feel any creepiness or dread as they were so overwhelmed by the mean girls and everything this story touched on which was pretty much everything but the kitchen sink. Though a voracious reader from a young age and a keen observer of the world, it took Ali over thirty years to put pen to paper but she sure is glad she did! Milly is an unreliable narrator par excellence, withholding information and her real emotions from both her foster father/counsellor, the art teacher who encourages her, the girl she befriends, the cruel Phoebe and just about everyone around her – as well as the reader, we come to realise as Milly dispenses just enough of the truth to tease and mislead. As her mother’s trial looms, with Milly as the star witness, Milly starts to wonder how much of her is nature, how much of her is nurture, and whether she is doomed to turn out like her mother after all.All Milly wanted was to fit in somewhere but soon she realizes that foster care isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. All the newspapers are covering her mother's story and Milly is desperate not to be like her mother and be good, but she is the daughter of a murderess. The story opens with a brilliant premise: Teenaged Annie turns her serial killer mother in to the police. Thank you, Michael Joseph Ltd and Ali Land for providing an advanced copy of this book for me to read in exchange for my honest review.

The first person narrative is captivating and unique, it allows for a short direct sentence structure and enables lengthy description to be abandoned and replaced by snappy impulsive griping words that delve deep in to Millie's mind. 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. She features briefly in the court episodes of the novel but Land chooses to focus on her daughter’s story instead. I could understand that her case warrants someone with his skill-set because of the severity of the trauma she’s been through, but I still didn’t believe that she’d necessarily be placed with him.It raised the debate of legal responsibility/mental health and foster care in our household - that actually got quite heated- I can't say many books have done that! 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. I’ve decided it just scrapes 3 stars, as I was able to read the book to the end, and I wouldn’t say I didn’t enjoy it at all, it just wasn’t what I was expecting and turned out not to be the book for me. Annie's mother is a serial killer - that in itself is shocking enough, but what multiplies the horror of these murders is that the victims were all young children.

Mike, the patriarch of the foster family and the one who pressed to take Milly under his wing, was a figure that frustrated my immensely. The ability of Ali Land in structuring this plot, her character of Annie/Millie, one person split in two personalities, and our conception or perception of what constitutes good or bad, good or evil, a bad seed kept me turning the pages. Milly also frequently "talks" to her estranged mother and sometimes it was confusing to me as a reader. The expectations which were in many ways exceeded- it's refreshing insightful narrative voice is brutal but wonderful to read, so much left unsaid, so much you can't know- you never know what someone's thinking but this gives Millie the victim a voice without telling you all ! The questioning she undergoes in court is astonishingly brought home how a child brought up with overbearing, mind turning parents can have an effect on your psychological mind when she is listening out behind a screen for just the breathing sounds of her mother.As her mother's trial looms, with Milly as the star witness, Milly starts to wonder how much of her is nature, how much of her is nurture, and whether she is doomed to turn out like her mother after all. I felt a lot of sympathy for her not only with her upbringing but also with the school bullies and the fact that she felt that she was so alone. Milly can’t let go of her mother and she is acutely aware that her mother was grooming her to be just like herself. What type of humans are we that we read this crap and allow ourselves to become so hardened to travesty? I would have thought you would be placed in temporary foster care and provided with a separate psychologist.

She feels strongly about not ending up like her Mom and we see this thought process throughout the book. Also it did seem odd that Mike could actually have counselling sessions with Milly in his house while being her foster father – surely that would be a conflict of interest? At the same time I didn't feel like the author overdid it with descriptions of what happened and I appreciated that.Sentence structure is awkward at times with Milly describing proceedings-- "shifted in his chair, he did--” like a sort of mini-Yoda.