killers Archives - Page 2 of 2

Yzabel / September 1, 2015

Review: Demon Road

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

The mind-blowing new supernatural thriller from bestselling author DEREK LANDY, creator of international sensation Skulduggery Pleasant.

Full of Landy’s trademark wit, action and razor-sharp dialogue, DEMON ROAD kicks off with a shocking opener and never lets up the pace in an epic road-trip across the supernatural landscape of America. Killer cars, vampires, undead serial killers: they’re all here. And the demons? Well, that’s where Amber comes in… Sixteen years old, smart and spirited, she’s just a normal American teenager until the lies are torn away and the demons reveal themselves.

Forced to go on the run, she hurtles from one threat to another, revealing a tapestry of terror woven into the very fabric of her life. Her only chance rests with her fellow travellers, who are not at all what they appear to be…

Review:

[I received a copy of this novel through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Mixed feelings here, as some things I definitely liked, and some others rather bored me.

(For the record: I have never read anything else by Derek Landy, so I cannot compare with his Skullduggery Pleasant series. I guess it’s for the best, as I can judge this book as standing on its own, then.)

There’s a fair share of good ideas in this novel. The strange bodyguard with an even stranger car that definitely sends bad vibes (and digests people). Deals with a Demon, a real one, that doesn’t like being cheated and will demand rather gruesome things in payment (not just souls: it’s also in how they’re harvested). Characters able to transform in demonic creatures. The Road itself, carrying them onto weird paths and into weirder encounters. Little towns that look so nice at first, yet quickly reveal their true colours. Serial killers and creepy doll houses. A wooden witch that has her own human quality in spite of all her wrongdoings. Blood and gore and fighting—and the author doesn’t shy away from those, nor from offing characters, I’m not saying which ones.

There’s dark humour, too, sometimes in dialogue, sometimes in situations or descriptions. It fitted well enough with the overall serious matter of Amber having to run from her parents, since they want to kill and eat her. Her parents. Who are great in their own ways, see the scene where they handle the school’s principal, and this is where, straight from the beginning, you realise that this family is definitely a screwed up one.

However, I couldn’t warm up more to this novel, for two main reasons.

The first was the plot itself, as it quickly assumed a repetitive form: get in the car, arrive in new place, look for information, get into dire straits, solve issue, get into car again, rinse and repeat. There were vampires (of the rather traditional type) and witches and killers, but… after a while, the pattern became monotonous, and I found myself sometimes skimming to get faster to the final confrontation.

The second was some of the characters. Milo was alright, and hilarious in his own deadpan ways, although there’s quite some room left for more development here. Amber… I couldn’t decide whether I liked her or not—I’m somewhat annoyed at the whole “dull, vaguely fat teenager that every other guy calls ugly, but who turns into a sexy demon” (what’s wrong with being just plain average, and why did she have to be called on it anyway?). As for Glen…. Uh, he’s the kind of character you will either find incredibly sweet and bubbly, or incredibly annoying from being too chatty—and also too stupid to live. After all, the guy ended up with a certain dark mark for basically just… nothing? Being an idiot? I just couldn’t stand him anymore after a while.

There’s no romance, though. No useless love triangle. If only for that, I am glad!

I’m still somewhat interested in this series, as the ending opens up on pretty gloomy and dangerous prospects, but this will be more the kind of novel I’ll borrow from the library, not buy. 2 to 2.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 28, 2015

Review: Suspended in Dusk

Suspended In Dusk by Simon Dewar

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

DUSK
A time between times.

A whore hides something monstrous and finds something special.
A homeless man discovers the razor blade inside the apple.
Unlikely love is found in the strangest of places.
Secrets and dreams are kept… forever.

Or was it all just a trick of the light?

Suspended in Dusk brings together 19 stories by some of the finest minds in Dark Fiction:

Ramsey Campbell, John Everson, Rayne Hall, Shane McKenzie, Angela Slatter, Alan Baxter, S.G Larner, Wendy Hammer, Sarah Read, Karen Runge, Toby Bennett, Benjamin Knox, Brett Rex Bruton, Icy Sedgwick, Tom Dullemond, Armand Rosamilia, Chris Limb, Anna Reith, J.C. Michael.

Introduction by Bram Stoker Award Winner and World Horror Convention Grand Master, Jack Ketchum.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Not as horrific a I expected it to be, or maybe I’m just hard to scare, at least when it comes to what tends to spook a lot of people? This said, while none of the works here jumped at me as being absolutely striking, none was abysmal either, and it was still an interesting collection of stories—some closer to “traditional” horror (zombies, vampires…), and some mixing their scary revelations with elements appearing out of tales at first. Only at first.

The ones I liked best:

“Shadows of the Lonely Dead”, in which a hospice nurse can feel the impending death of her patients and take this darkness into herself, looking for a reason to this strange power of hers.

“Burning”: a store burns at night, but the people of the town do not seem eager to do anything about it, nor to worry too much about the people who live there. Not a traditional horror story, but one that plays on different horrors, unfortunately so close to our world that they’re made even more terrible.

“Ministry of Outrage”: a secret government body engineers situations to keep the masses in control. Made scarier by the fact it’s not even so far-fetched, in a conspiracy-theory kind of way.

“Digging Deep”: being buried alive is probably an atavistic terror for most of us. But being rescued may be even more terrible…

“Hope Is Here”: when a group taking care of homeless people also takes matters in hand, making sure that they have all the right candidates for their program.

“Negatives”: creepy abandoned theme park is creepy. Twins go to a derelict place to take pictures, and find out what’s on the other side of the mirror—and that dreams can so easily turn into nightmares.

“A Keeper of Secrets”: when a little girl meets a fae child in the attic, and starts whispering secrets to keep her new friend strong and alive.

“The Way of All Flesh”: this story about a man who comes into a small rural town has two elements that tend to fascinate me—small towns with not so innocent inhabitants, and a flesh-eating killer.

Other stories worth mentioning, even though they may not be the ones I’ll remember in the long term: “Fit Camp”, “Maid of Bones”, “At Dusk They Come”. Overall this anthology is a good pick, especially if you scare more easily than I do. 3.5 stars, rounded to 4.

Yzabel / August 9, 2015

Review: The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl

The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl: From the Peculiar Adventures of John Lovehart, Esq., Volume 2 by Ishbelle Bee

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

A dark and twisted Victorian melodrama, like Alice in Wonderland goes to Hell, from the author of The Singular & Extraordinary Tale of Mirror & Goliath.

Two orphans, Pedrock and Boo Boo, are sent to live in the sinister village of Darkwound. There they meet and befriend the magical and dangerous Mr Loveheart and his neighbour, Professor Hummingbird, a recluse who collects rare butterflies. Little do they know that Professor Hummingbird has attracted the wrath of a demon named Mr Angelcakes.

One night, Mr Angelcakes visits Boo Boo and carves a butterfly onto her back. Boo Boo starts to metamorphose into a butterfly/human hybrid, and is kidnapped by Professor Hummingbird. When Mr Loveheart attempts to rescue her with the aid of Detective White and Constable Walnut, they too are turned into butterflies.

Caught between Professor Hummingbird and the demon Angelcakes, Loveheart finds himself entangled in a web much wider and darker than he could have imagined, and a plot that leads him right to the Prime Minister and even Queen Victoria herself…

Review:

[I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Like the first novel in this series, I had trouble rating this one. Some aspects I really found delightful, while others left me cold.

I loved the “mad” characters’ narratives—Loveheart’s and Heap’s. The way they tell of the events from their point of view, their disjointed thoughts, the apparently random use of capital letters, how they go about killing or maiming while wishing for custard and pursuing so many different musings, all these quite nicely reflected the fact they were all but human. Heap made for a glorious villain, while Loveheart was his lovely psychopathic self. I couldn’t help cheering for him, even though he was basically just as much a monster as his nemesis. Only he didn’t kill on such a large scale. Or did he? With him, you can never tell.

I also liked seeing White and Walnut back in action. They made for a funny duo, from their fumbling steps with the cursed jewel that sent them to Wales, to how they always ended up in dire straits due to being somewhat silly. In other circumstances, I’d file them as Too Stupid To Live; however, the tone here being clearly humorous and tongue-in-cheek, it left room for that, and it was alright.

On the other hand, a lot of the other characters were either quickly dispatched or barely etched, and very little development happened in that regard (though Mrs Charm and her medieval horror novels were amusing—I’d definitely read those if they existed, I mean, come on, “The Cannibal Bishop of Edinburgh” is a winning title, isn’t it?). I would’ve wanted Boo Boo, more specifically, to be more fleshed, as she was an intriguing girl, considering how and where she was brought up.

The action felt disjointed in some parts, which was fitting when it came to Loveheart, but caused the story to be stuck at times on killing and severed heads flying in the room, but little else. The ending dragged a little, too, the very last chapter opening towards a third novel, yet the ones in between taking maybe just wee bit too long to close up the remaining characters’ storylines.

Overall, a somewhat over-the-top novel that manages to make light of dark situations, with a charming twist of language, even though its rhythm itself was uneven. 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 3, 2015

Review: Way Down Dark

Way Down Dark: Australia Book 1 by James Smythe

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

There’s one truth on Australia.

You fight or you die.

Usually both.

Imagine a nightmare from which there is no escape.

Seventeen-year-old Chan’s ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. They never found one.

This is a hell where no one can hide.

The only life that Chan’s ever known is one of violence, of fighting. Of trying to survive.

This is a ship of death, of murderers and cults and gangs.

But there might be a way to escape. In order to find it, Chan must head way down into the darkness – a place of buried secrets, long-forgotten lies, and the abandoned bodies of the dead.

This is Australia.

Seventeen-year-old Chan, fiercely independent and self-sufficient, keeps her head down and lives quietly, careful not to draw attention to herself amidst the violence and disorder. Until the day she makes an extraordinary discovery – a way to return the Australia to Earth. But doing so would bring her to the attention of the fanatics and the murderers who control life aboard the ship, putting her and everyone she loves in terrible danger.

And a safe return to Earth is by no means certain.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Life on the Australia spaceship is hard: the Earth is gone, only handfuls of survivors were sent on such ships through space, in the hopes that someday they’d find a new place to live… but aren’t these travellers way too entrenched in destructive ways to even reach that someday? This is what I found deeply intriguing and nagging in this novel: a strong dichotomy between the goal, the Promised Earth, and how the ship’s people were getting to it. Telling myths and stories about their origins… yet living almost day to day only, as if not hoping in anything else anymore. Some of them taking care of their arboretum and their few other sources of goods… yet others bent on destroying, conquering, killing, razing down whatever they could, just because they could. Trying to survive by scrapping out metal and other bits of the ship. And all the while, those colonists remained trapped in their own microcosm, unable—or unwilling—to do more than that, their world torn between various gangs.

This is when you know that the society Chan’s living in is completly upside down, and that something has gone terribly wrong. And the twist, although there are several hints and it’s not so difficult to guess, pretty much fits.

Chan was a likeable enough protagonist: headstrong, wanting to help others, but not immune to bits of selfishness and cowardice, as she was trying to keep her promise to her mother (“don’t die”). Not a perfect girl, not a special girl, but one who knew from the beginning she wasn’t a special snowflake and that her only way of ensuring her survival was to bank on her mother’s reputation and make it her own, using tricks and carefulness. The choices she made could’ve been made by many, many people: can you decide who to save when you do have some power (fighting…), only it’s obvious you’ll just never have enough? However naive some of her choices seemed to be, Chan tried to do what she felt was right by her fellow dwellers on the ship. She had a nice balance of good and bad sides, bringing humanity into chaos and madness. She could easily have let herself become a Rex, but she really tried not to. And she didn’t spend most of the story swooning over some guy(s), which is always a nice change.

I liked the violent, brutal society depicted here, even though as far as world building goes, it was stretched rather thin. However, this was partly justified by how many decades, centuries had passed since the ship had left Earth: history decayed into gritty myth, and without much guidance, the minds of the people themselves started “decaying” as well. Though it may be seen as simplistic, it was also logical, all things considered, and was a good way of illustrating how narrow the world of the survivors had become.

On the other hand, the pacing of the story was a really problematic element for me. While it was necessary to illustrate how harsh life was on the Australia, the various events in Chan’s life became redundant: be careful, try to work, barter, climb the gantries, escape the Lows, hide, climb up and down, hide some more, fight, get wounded, hide again, fight and get wounded again… After a while, it felt like filling between the strong starting point (Riadne’s death) and the “big reveal”—and in a book that isn’t so long, it’s kind of annoying. This is why I’m not giving it a full 4 stars.

The end, too, brings closure to this first part of the trilogy (yay), but its cliffhanger was annoying nonetheless.

A pleasant read, one that kept me coming back to it, and that I liked overall. In the long run, I don’t know if it’s going to be that much more original than a lot of other dystopian YA stories out there. The ending seems to open towards something very different… or maybe not so? We’ll see, we’ll see.

3.5 stars.

Yzabel / July 2, 2015

Review: Black-Eyed Susans

Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

A girl’s memory lost in a field of wildflowers.
A killer still spreading seeds.

At seventeen, Tessa became famous for being the only surviving victim of a vicious serial killer. Her testimony put him on death row. Decades later, a mother herself, she receives a message from a monster who should be in prison. Now, as the execution date rapidly approaches, Tessa is forced to confront a chilling possibility: Did she help convict the wrong man?

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

4 stars. This is the first time I read anything by this author, and I admit that when I picked it among my ever-growing pile of ARCs to read, I didn’t even really remember what it was about. Which was probably for the best, as comparisons with other authors (such as often seen in blurbs) sometimes affect me in a negative way. You know, the “this is the next X”, or “X meets Y in this breathtaking novel.” So I was able, for once, to approach a story without remembering that. And it was good.

The novel deals with Tessa, the victim of a serial-killer, who survived and managed to send her would-be murderer to jail, where he’s waiting for the death penalty to be applied. Years later, now a mother with a bubbly, cheerful daughter of her own—a daughter who’s as carefree as the pre-killer Tessa—she is still haunted by those memories, or rather by the lack thereof: no matter what, she still can’t remember everything from her ordeal, and what she remembers of it may or may not be the truth. Moreover, Tessa’s starting to have second-thoughts: what if the man about to die was an innocent, and the real psychopath still out there?

“Black-Eyed Susans” deals with several interesting themes: psychologic and physical trauma (Tessa after the “event”), lies (what was told and untold when it came to the trial), forgiveness (the man on death row), fear (being potentially stalked by the actual killer, or even seeing him target the daughter)… There are very likeable characters, like Charlie, and others who sow constant doubts as to their loyalty and real intentions. There came a moment when it was difficult to tell what was only in Tessa’s mind, what was triggered by other people’s delusions, and what may have been actual happenings—although I still managed to narrow down my suspicions regarding to the killer to two, then one person relatively soon.

This book also has two things I really like: an unreliable narrator, and a narrative switching from present to past to present again. While the latter can be a deal-breaker for some readers, I personally like that technique. It made it tricky to determine where were the turning points, while at the same time giving hints. Some of those were just a tad bit heavy-handed, but… Overall I liked the story overall no matter what.

Yzabel / June 5, 2015

Review: The Euthanist

The Euthanist by Alex Dolan

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:
They know her as Kali. She is there to see them off into the afterlife with kindness, with efficiency, and with two needles. She’s been a part of the right-to-die movement for years, an integral member, complicit in the deaths of twenty-seven men and women, all suffering from terminal illnesses. And she just helped the wrong patient.

Leland Moon has been with the Bureau for his entire career, but even as a respected agent, he was unable to keep his own son from being kidnapped on his way to school. When his boy finally came home, he told terrifying stories of his captors, and his nightmares haven’t stopped since.

Moon draws Kali into his mission, a mesmerizing cat-and-mouse game with two ruthless predators—one behind bars, one free—who hold the secrets that could bring comfort to the families of their victims. This powerful journey towards grace and towards peace will force both Leland and Kali to question everything they believe to be true and just.

Review:

(I was given a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

One thing I’d like to say: blurbs, please stop spoiling the plot. Because, you see, when the main character learns of something only 50% in the book, and it’s presented as a reveal, the reader having known for so long somewhat deflates it. Which is too bad.

Overall, this was an interesting story, one that made me keep reading, but to be honest, I found the blurb was more exciting than what it turned out to be. I didn’t feel the urgency that much, and the two predators didn’t come off as so ruthless in the end: we know how dangerous they used to be because of what other characters and newspapers said about them, but since they’re not seen directly in action, their deeds appeared once removed, and the impact on me wasn’t the same. I didn’t feel the immediacy.

Mostly what I had a hard time with was Kali herself. While she’s strong in a physical way, the mistakes she made were those of an amateur, not expected from someone who’s been disguising herself and evading the law for years in order to give the good death to her clients. It’s as if she had never really contemplated the possibility of getting caught (contrary to her mentor, whom she knew had made preparations), and once caught, every decision was illogical: running to other people and thus endangering them, using her real name when pretending to be someone she wasn’t… In general: not being paranoid enough. Even I know that the first thing you do when on the run is to ditch your mobile phone, especially when you know you’ve remained unconscious for several hours with a manipulative bastard who could have made just any plans in order to follow you later.

Leland was infuriating, but in a way that still made me want to get to know him better, at least. He meant business, even though this involved lying and behaving harshly.

I did like the themes of trauma (due to kidnapping, more specifically) that the novel wove, the way different people reacted to it (one became sort of a recluse, another let her story out to exorcise her fears), and the person with a strong desire for revenge realised that this hadn’t to be the main goal. Leland’s second trade, while manipulative, of course, also allowed him to get an insight he probably hadn’t expected within a world that he seemed to see previously as black and white only.

I guess that makes it a 2.5 stars: there were definitely twists and turns that made me want to know what would come next–it is a page-turner–but the main character was just too annoying, and her mistakes kept distracting me.

Yzabel / May 26, 2014

Review: The Butcher

The Butcher by Jennifer Hillier

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

A rash of grisly serial murders plagued Seattle until the infamous “Beacon Hill Butcher” was finally hunted down and killed by police chief Edward Shank in 1985. Now, some thirty years later, Shank, retired and widowed, is giving up his large rambling Victorian house to his grandson Matt, whom he helped raise.

Settling back into his childhood home and doing some renovations in the backyard to make the house feel like his own, Matt, a young up-and-coming chef and restaurateur, stumbles upon a locked crate he’s never seen before. Curious, he picks the padlock and makes a discovery so gruesome it will forever haunt him… Faced with this deep dark family secret, Matt must decide whether to keep what he knows buried in the past, go to the police, or take matters into his own hands.

Meanwhile Matt’s girlfriend, Sam, has always suspected that her mother was murdered by the Beacon Hill Butcher—two years after the supposed Butcher was gunned down. As she pursues leads that will prove her right, Sam heads right into the path of Matt’s terrible secret.

A thriller with taut, fast-paced suspense, and twists around every corner, The Butcher will keep you guessing until the bitter, bloody end.

Review:

(I got an ARC through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. Quotes liable to change upon publishing.)

From now on, I’m going to maintain that this book was classified in the wrong genre.

Let’s be upfront: as a thriller, I’m giving it 2 stars, and that’s being kind. It didn’t keep me on the seat of my edge. It didn’t give me, well, the thrills. The mystery wasn’t so well-done, and rested upon a lot of coincidences, such as people stumbling upon others in the middle of a conversation. I see what the author did here: revealing who the killer is in the beginning (seriously, you know who it is in chapter 1), and stressing the “why”, “how” and “will they take the fallout” aspects, rather than the “whodunnit” one; I’m not sure it worked properly, though. It may have worked better for me if the characters had been deeper, psychologically-speaking; their psyches were touched upon, sure, but not enough to offset the fact that without a whodunnit, it wasn’t exactly the same. Readers looking for that may not find this book to their liking.

But as a work of dark, dark humour? As a dark, twisted comedy? 4 stars.

This novel took whatever disgusting things were in me and brought them to the light. At least, I think it did, since I found myself snickering and even laughing more than once. It’s like watching a trainwreck: you’re feeling horrible for doing so, but you can’t help keep staring. It was the same thing here.

Graphic, violent, sexualised killings. The male protagonist is a sociopath. The world revolves around himsel, and it’s the most natural thing, and don’t you dare act otherwise. He feels bad about someone dying, but not because the person died: because it might impact his success as a restaurateur and chef. The male deuteragonist is a psychopath with a steely, condescending opinion on people on general and women in particular. The girl tries to make sense of it all, the cops try to make sense of it all, to no avail. Other women get killed. And yet. Yet, it’s funny. If it was made into a movie, I’d place it along “Burn After Reading” on my shelf. Think “what the hell just happened here, and why are all those guys dead?” funny. Or: “Oh, so they found the corpses of the Bay Harbour Butcher’s victims… Wait, I’m the Butcher!” funny. If you snickered at Dexter trying to help the police catch the aforementioned Bay Harbour Butcher, fully knowing he’s trying to catch himself, and has to sabotage the whole thing so that he can escape—cue in mistakes he barely manages to cover—then, yes, this novel may be for you.

It was the same here.

In fact, “The Clusterfuck” would make a perfect alternate title for this novel.

What happens when you accidentally kill a guy, ask help from the one person whom you know is worse than you, and that person tells you to take the body out of the dumpster?

“Okay, I’ll try.” He took a deep breath and tried not to think about his aching back. “But my back really hurts—”
“Fuck your back,” Edward barked. “If you’re standing, it’s not broken. This is your ass on the line and right now tipping the goddamned dumpster is the only option we got. You want to get the body out or not?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Then do what the fuck I say.”

Indeed, son. The garbage men will be here in four hours, so stuff cut the I-hurt-my-back whining. This is Bumbling Serial Killer 101 for you.

He knew they wouldn’t be able to save him. One hundred milligrams of Viagra combined with all the medications for his heart and blood pressure that he was already taking… the old guy didn’t stand a chance.

Retirement communities for active seniors? Oh, gee, everybody knows those are places where residents keep humping each other, and the nurses really aren’t surprised to find old guys overdosing on Viagra. Poisoned? The third death in two weeks? A killer? Here? Nah. It’s all Viagra’s fault.

I’ll let you imagine what happens when the girl, convinced that her boyfriend’s cheating on her, tries to catch him in the act.

So I laughed. And it was horrible, because people were dying in this novel, and the killer remained on the loose, unsuspected. Worse, everybody and their dog came to him for advice. Cosmic irony to the power of ten. Since the characters were not developed deep enough, it paradoxically put them in the roles of unwilling puppets, thrown into a series of coincidences, fuck-ups, and situations that make you facepalm because you just know how it’s going to end, and it’s going to suck for them, but you’re going to chuckle anyway. Horrible, horrible readers that we are.

As a real, serious thriller, I think this novel fails flat.

As dark, partly slapstick half-comedy, it works. I liked it. I did.

And I still think it should be marketed as so.

Yzabel / March 11, 2014

Review: Dear Killer

Dear Killer by Katherine Ewell

My rating:[usr 2]

Summary:

Rule One—Nothing is right, nothing is wrong.
Rule Two—Be careful.
Rule Three—Fight using your legs whenever possible, because they’re the strongest part of your body. Your arms are the weakest.
Rule Four—Hit to kill. The first blow should be the last, if at all possible.
Rule Five—The letters are the law.

Kit takes her role as London’s notorious “Perfect Killer” seriously. The letters and cash that come to her via a secret mailbox are not a game; choosing who to kill is not an impulse decision. Every letter she receives begins with “Dear Killer,” and every time Kit murders, she leaves a letter with the dead body. Her moral nihilism and thus her murders are a way of life—the only way of life she has ever known.

But when a letter appears in the mailbox that will have the power to topple Kit’s convictions as perfectly as she commits her murders, she must make a decision: follow the only rules she has ever known, or challenge Rule One, and go from there.

Katherine Ewell’s Dear Killer is a sinister psychological thriller that explores the thin line between good and evil, and the messiness of that inevitable moment when life contradicts everything you believe

Review:

(I got an ARC of this book courtesy of Edelweiss. The book being published by now, a few things may have changed, compared to the version I read.)

I can’t say I hated this novel, but it didn’t leave me with a strong impression either. I expected more darkness from Kit, more moral ambiguity; instead, I found a lot of little things that constantly challenged my suspension of disbelief.

I think the main issue for me was a pitfall a lot of stories about serial killers have to avoid: how to make the killer really dangerous, while also giving him/her flaws that would allow other people to catch him/her? Because, obviously, if the murderer’s so perfect nobody can ever uncover his/her true identity, there’s no challenge, no conflict, in terms of both plot and character development. This is where the story failed for me: Kit is “the Perfect Killer”, but the way she acts in the novel, it’s a wonder she wasn’t caught before. She befriends a Scotland Yard detective and almost immediately gives out information the police’s not supposed to know. She kills in her own school, and sets it up to make herself the only witness. She inserts herself into the investigation, goes back to the crime scenes, even lets one victim go free. She takes some care not to leave prints by using gloves all the time and not resorting to weapons that could be found… but she’s not too savvy when it comes to the more advanced forensic techniques.

Unbelievable, therefore, was the police’s incompetence. Everybody in London seems to know where the “Dear Killer”‘s mailbox is, but the police never found any lead. Kit’s signature are letters from the very people who asked her to kill, containing extremely valuable information about them and the victims; 50 murders later, how come none of those has ever led to a clue, how come the police hasn’t managed to get a confession allowing them to find the mailbox, if only by striking a bargain with a guilt-ridden “customer”? Also, Alex shouldn’t ever have allowed Kit on a crime scene, nor talked about the investigation. This works in Dexter because he’s already a member of the police force—but even Dexter’s presence on some scenes is questioned by his colleagues, when there aren’t any blood splatters to check, so if Dex can’t be there without rising suspicion, how can Kit, the teenager, whose only link with the police is the detective her mother once brought home for dinner?

Then, there’s the ambiguity of Kit’s position regarding her jobs. Is she really a serial killer, or a hired killer? Does she really off people because of some urges, or is she merely doing what her mother taught her, is she what she was brought up to be? Is her moral nihilism truly that, and does she even know where she stands? My qualms with those questions is that they were never really examined, and Kit’s actions and thoughts felt too random to really play a part in what could’ve been serious introspection. Once she says there’s no right nor wrong, and then she seems to believe she kills for justice, but the killing jobs she chooses to carry can’t be justified this way (one guy writes that he wants her to kill his fiancée, because he was involved in a hit-and-run, and now she wants him to confess to the police… so Kit kills the woman, no questions asked, when clearly “justice” would’ve been to get rid of the guy who had already taken a life). I would’ve find it more believable if she had questioned her choices on that level; she starts doing it with the one victim she lets go, but considering who her last victim is at the end, it might as well never have happened.

Kit’s relationship with her mother was probably what kept me reading: extremely unhealthy, riddled with her mom’s own madness. Mrs. Ward: a women who had married a certain man only so that she could be left alone, who had transferred her urges to kill onto her daughter, and basically shaped a kid into a monster. Maybe the idea of a teenage killer was a bit stretched, but it didn’t matter, because there was a reason behind it, and it was something I could go with (children find their first examples in their parents: what if the parents themselves are dysfunctional to the extreme?) Like a trainwreck, it was something I couldn’t help but watch, even though it was deeply unsettling, and just like with Kit’s moments of doubts about her killings, there was something interesting underneath it all, some deep questions to be asked; however, it wasn’t carried far enough in my opinion to shine through. In general, I found Kit’s thoughts and observations remained too much on the surface level, and what could’ve been character growth (acceptance, finding herself through her killings, different moral choices, whatever) only started happening, yet never went there.

Yzabel / January 9, 2010

Review: Are You Watching?

Are You Watching? by Vincent Ralph
My rating: ★★★★☆

Blurb:

Ten years ago, Jess’s mother was murdered by the Magpie Man.

She was the first of his victims, but not the last.

Now Jess is the star of a YouTube reality series and she’s using it to catch the killer once and for all.

The whole world is watching her every move.

And so is the Magpie Man.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Ten years ago, Jess’s mother was the first victim of a serial killer that proceed to claim many more—one woman every nine months since then. Tired of said killer still being at large, Jess decides to apply to a YouTube reality show that will give her one day of air time every week, which she plans to use to appeal to potential witnesses, and basically keep the case hot so that her family can finally see justice being served.

All in all, this story turned out enjoyable and fairly well-constructed overall, with a nice balance of red herrings and suspense, even though the premise is slightly over the top. (The first thing anyone should think when it comes to Jessica’s means is “if that killer’s still around it will attract their attention and she’ll be their next victim for sure”, so it’s kind of baffling that the adults around her were relatively easily on board with it—especially in that time and age, when the flip side of social media is not a mystery.) It also has something very simple, but that I enjoy in this kind of novel: short chapters (sometimes 1-2 pages long, not more), which means that, since I mainly read while commuting and during breaks, I could easily stop and pick it up again pretty much at any time, even when I only had five minutes to read. And I did want to keep reading, and knowing what would happen next.

Of course, the heroine being 17, her decisions were often reckless and bordering on stupid, which is definitely not unheard of in YA stories… On the other hand, it does make up for twists and not-so-happy consequences for the characters, so that’s that. All TSTL tendencies set apart, though, I really liked the other aspects of the story. Jess’s relationship with her close firneds. How her family has been spending the past ten years mired in grief, with her father trying to function as best as he could but never becoming who he used to be again. Her meeting the families of the other victims of the “Magpie Man”. It wasn’t only about catching a killer, but also about (re)discovering how to live after such gruesome events, after a loved one is snatched away from you—and after realising that yes, one’s actions always has consequences.

Conclusion: 3.5 stars.