Book Review #138: Kill For Me, Kill For You by Steve Cavanagh

 

After meeting by chance one evening, Amanda and Wendy realise they have something in common - they are both experiencing grief and want to make the men who destroyed their families pay. Knowing they can never exact the revenge they crave, they come up with an idea: if you kill for me, I'll kill for you...

The premise of the book is deliberately vague, but I think the main idea of it is enough to give you a flavour of what the story is about.

I have mixed feelings about this book. There's so many things about it that I really loved, but there are also a few things that I could have done without.

To start off, the first two chapters are absolutely riveting. I feel like it took no time at all to bond and connect with the characters. Not only are the chapters exciting, but they're also really visceral. You feel like you're living in the scenes with the characters. It would have been amazing if the whole book had stayed like this.

The story is told from two points of view, and for such a long time it feels like reading two completely different books. When you finish the book it makes sense that it is written in this way, but as you're reading, the whole situation gets a bit frustrating. There's no way to see if there is any connection and every time you get to a different point of view, you want to go back to the one you were just reading.

It takes almost 100 pages to get into the main plot, and while this is fine because each chapter tends to end on a really intriguing cliffhanger that makes you keep reading, it does get to the point where you just want the plot to get going.

The plot is so far-fetched that I found myself going back and forth trying to find plot holes, because there were things that didn't make sense. And as entertaining as it is, after a while you become less invested because you don't believe what's happening.

But as I've said, it was really entertaining. There were so many shocking moments, and even though I found a couple of the twists a bit predictable they were still fun to read.

Unfortunately, the ending let things down for me. For a start it felt really rushed, like everything needed to be tied up to have a nice conclusion rather than ending the way a situation like this naturally would.

The story can't decide who it wants the bad guy to be, and this is especially evident in the ending when the writing seems to be asking us to root for and forgive a character that is undeniably evil for no reason without going through a redemption arc. 

And on this character, without spoiling anything, I either needed less information about them or a much more thorough explanation to really get on board with what happened. So because of that it didn't really work for me.

So overall, although the book lost half a star for the ending, I really did have a good time reading this. It's the kind of book you don't want to put down and it's definitely worth reading!

3.5/5