Book Review | The Kind Worth Killing | Peter Swanson | Psychological Thriller

Ok so psychological thrillers with super unlikable characters going about committing crimes are not unfamiliar to me but I can tell that these can either end up in your best books ever read list, or be a complete let down. I have been on both ends of the spectrum with books like The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine and He Started It by Samantha Downing, but this one was really good – better than I expected it to be.

The plot starts with Ted Severson, whose wife has been cheating on him with Brad, her building contractor, sitting in an airport bar. He is approached by Lily, a stranger to him, to whom he opens up about his problematic married life over some margaritas. Lily proposes to help Ted kill his wife. And there begins their quest of murder.

The character Lily normalizes murder in every way possible, but that’s not something that bothers me. Its how the character is made.

“Truthfully, I don’t think murder is necessarily as bad as people make it out to be. Everyone dies. What difference does it make if a few bad apples get pushed along a little sooner than God intended? And your wife, for example, seems like the kind worth killing”

---- This is what Lily says and it becomes the namesake of the book. But Lily has a past, after knowing which you will realize how did she come to be like this, how it all started, and her actions earns some justification (trying not to spoil anything).

The book can be easily renamed “101 Ways to Plot and Execute a Murder”, because it is so full of everyone plotting to murder everyone behind their backs, using each other to get to their motives, and constant betrayal. Honestly, there are some really clever ways to commit murder and get away with it in the book. :P But the whole reading experience it offers is too great. As the plot progresses you are just intrigued more and more. This is a book actually worth being described as unputdownable.

The book has been written from multiple point of views, which adds a certain depth to the storytelling, without making it too confusing (thank God!). But what was too confusing to me was the too frequent location changes. The plot takes place in too many different locations and there is just a lot of driving, grabbing drinks in bars, inns, old homes, new homes and a lot more (why does the characters having food always make me so hungry ughhhh!). These location changes make it difficult for me to comprehend what is taking place where. Coming to the thriller elements, the book has a lot of twists! Though I had successfully guessed some of them, but some of them came as a shocker to me, And that right there did the job for me, because I read thrillers because of the twists. And the endings. The ending of this book was satisfying to me, and I got what I wanted, something I feared I wouldn’t, and that would bring down the whole experience for me. But at the end, it felt wholesome, at the same time not taking away the adrenaline rush of a super racy and twisty thriller.

My rating – 4/5

Happy Reading!😇

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