Kitty Collins is a poor little rich girl living in London. Her father made his money in slaughterhouses and meat packing, and when Kitty saw the family business up close and personal she quickly went vegan. The family money affords her a fabulous London penthouse that her mother gave her, but otherwise she makes her living as a social media influencer and has a group of equally vacuous social media influencer "friends" - although Kitty's follower numbers outstrip them all.
She didn't set out to start killing men. The first one happened quite by accident. A drunken lout who accosts Kitty outside of a club. Seriously, it was an accident! But soon Kitty finds herself an avenging angel - taking out men who so richly deserve it (rapists, molesters, real upstanding citizens all). The cops aren't on to her - the problem is someone else is. Our Kitty has a stalker.
This book is like if Sex and the City, Dexter and the movie version of American Psycho had an unholy baby. It strives for humor and satire but it doesn't always quite hit the mark. Part of the problem is that for a very long time you pretty much hate everybody in this book. This could partly be a Wendy Problem. I'll admit, I find Influencer Culture largely gross and there's nothing in the first half of this book that changed my mind. These are all vacuous, shallow people with really pathetic lives. Can Influencers "do good?" Sure, they can. But by and large the feeding of consumer culture and preying on peoples' insecurities makes my left eye twitch.
But there's dead bodies, and nothing will get Wendy to keep reading a book quite like dead bodies (don't judge). Things start to even out a bit once Kitty gets a love interest as it gives her character more dimension. Although if I think about it for more than a hot second, the fact that it takes a man to give Kitty's character more dimension is a problematic development for a book trying to make the statement that this particular book is trying to make. Also the "twists" in this story, the various "big reveals" come out of left field. What you think you know you don't really know - and here's the problem with that...
There's no foreshadowing. Like none. These juicy nuggets are just tossed on to the page with all the subtlety of a live hand grenade.
There's an inordinate amount of pop culture references that will age this book exponentially as the days tick by (but really, it's a book about a social media influencer so...) and somehow Kitty having her cell phone on her every time she kills someone doesn't seem to get her in trouble (Hello, GPS tracking? Pinging off cell phone towers? But again, probably too much to expect from what this book's ultimate goal is...)
Did I like this book? Not entirely. Could I stop reading this book? Reader, I could not. And while Whiskey points out very valid criticisms about the latter portion of the book in her review, these issues didn't bother me quite as much. If anything the second half worked a bit better for me than the first half - mainly because by that point I was past the live hand grenade twists and Kitty was more "in peril" than simply vacuous and blood-thirsty.
I wasn't madly in love, but I'll read Brent's next book.
Final Grade = B-
5 comments:
I love it when there's the kind of book chatter that comes from two readers with distinct tastes reading and reviewing the same book.
Mind you, I'm not tempted myself, but it's great to read about someone else's "No, really, I couldn't put it down, just don't ask me to think too much about it" reading.
(I prefer the kind where you can't put it down and you think about it for days if not years, but a change of pace is always nice, so long as the "can't put it down" part is there)
Just wanted to say - I love blogs and wish we could go back! It was a more congenial and civilized (as hard as it is to believe) environment.
I don't do social media any more, so I'll keep coming back for as long as I can.
Slightly more on topic. And yeah, I can't with social influencer stories. Even when the characters are compelling and likable, it's a world I'm trying to get away from, not inhabit more deeply. I just want contemporary romances where the plot doesn't hinge on social media, going viral, or royalty. Is that so much to ask?
@Jill: I'm not sure the blogs I visited most were of the 'congenial and civilized' bent, but the format allowed for discussions that could span weeks, and that, in the best cases, because really thoughtful analysis of the genre. I miss that deeply.
And I'm with you; I've pretty much given up on straight-contemporary for the time being, with very very few exceptions--like Erin Hahn and Emma Barry, but even those involved a level of celebrity, so. (And I have all of Olivia Dade's in the TBR, but again, also a level of celebrity)
Oh good, I like when someone reads a book in any small way because of what I said and ends up enjoying it! I don't necessarily have to personally like the characters I'm reading about, someone once asked "How could you give Martha (from Buried in the Rain by Barbara Michaels) your favorite Secondary Character??" I'm more like How could I not?? The author wrote an amazing character, even if I didn't like her.
I was so focused on Kitty, I'm not sure I fully caught how her bf's character giving her some more dimension was a crappy thing to do in a story like this. I ended up being so mad about how he wasn't the stalker helping her that I probably missed other aspects.
AL: Yeah, I'm not sure I can whole-heartedly recommend this and I hardly loved it unconditionally, but it was compelling in almost a train-wreck kind of way and I couldn't put it down. These days any book I can't put down gets bumped up at least half a grade, if not a full one.
Jill: I'm not sure what this says about me but I like influencer books when there's a dead body involved - preferably an influencer's dead body 😂
Jill + AL: Certainly some of the blogs could throw down but yes, I felt like we got a bit more of a deep dive into genre discussions with them. Some really excellent analysis of the genre that is now likely lost in the swirling vortex that is the digital realm. Also, could be just me, but I feel like social media has killed any sort of attention span I might have once had. I look back into the archives of this blog and want to weep sometimes - I wrote some smart things on occasion! I had some great posts pour out of me! Now it's a struggle to write pithy reviews.
Whiskey: Well Martha kicks ass and Be Buried in the Rain is one of my favorites from Michaels. I always like to read different takes on the same book and I'm not sorry I read this. What I found interesting is that the beginning worked better for you but the ending is what worked better for me.
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