Review: The Murder After The Night Before

The Murder After the Night Before by Katy Brent is a stand-alone suspense that blends chick-lit with dead bodies. I never could read a steady diet of chick lit, despite being the target demographic back in its heyday, but throw some dead bodies in there? I'm all in. This book was an experience, not always a good one, but an experience nonetheless.

The only way to describe this book is ugly. Molly Monroe is a 30-something journalist stuck in a dead end job writing for a tween girl magazine. She wakes up the morning after her office Christmas party to discover a strange man, fully clothed (and so is she...) in her bed. She's a hungover walking disaster hustling the guy out of her apartment, getting ready for work and making it to the office, naturally, late. And since she's such a hot mess she forgot to charge up her phone, so she hasn't seen any social media or retrieved any messages from last night. If she had, she at least would have been prepared. 

When she arrives at the office she learns the truth. She got rip-roaring black-out drunk at the office party then proceeded to barhop through London until she's livestreamed by an unknown person performing a sex act on a complete stranger outside a London bar. The social media response is predictable, and her boss sends her home for some time off, not being unsympathetic and offering to help her - in Molly's state it's entirely possible she was the victim of sexual assault. 

This would be bad enough for anyone to face. Molly is already spiraling when the hits just keep on coming. She returns home and finds her BFF and roommate, Posey, dead in the bathtub. Posey was the responsible one. The one who is a serious journalist, having just been promoted at work, who has her shit together, pays her bills on time etc. The cops arrive in short order and declare Posey's death an unfortunate accident, which doesn't track for Molly at all. I mean, it doesn't make sense. And since the cops aren't taking her seriously (I mean, duh) then it's up to Molly to snoop into Posey's life to try to find the truth. Which is no easy feat given Molly is still piecing together what happened the night before, but also turns out Posey was keeping plenty of secrets.

Despite immediately thinking of Molly as a hot mess, it was pretty obvious to me from the jump that Molly was "helped" along into her drunken state, likely with her drink(s) being tampered with. So she is a victim, but damn, she's still a hot mess. The first 30% of this book is just really unsavory and uncomfortable to read. Molly caught on a livestream giving a BJ to a stranger, social media behaving like social media, and very few people thinking there's anything wrong with tearing this woman to shreds. I stuck with it though and things really start to cook once Posey is found dead because then Molly is given a mission to discover the truth, against the insurmountable odds of nobody believing her because, well, see hot mess, live streamed sex act. 

The twists and turns then start to pile up and I was riveted. RIVETED I TELLS YA!  The author also explores grief in an honest way and has a lot to say about feminism and misogyny in general. Unsavory it may be, but it's an interesting stew all the same. 

But then, it happens. 

We get to the ending. Y'all I hate when an author doesn't stick the landing. There is some resolution to the story, especially in respect to what happened to Molly. We also find out who killed Posey. The problem with that? We just find out. We don't see that person being apprehended. There's no final showdown. We don't even find out what happens to the murderer. So we find out whodunit but we don't get the payoff. We don't get the justice. And y'all, bare minimum I need see the killer slapped in handcuffs or dead by the last sentence. While Molly ultimately pieces it together, the last chapter is literally a flashback scene to Posey's death. Shit, for all I know this bad person is still out there living their best life and now I just want to light everything on fire.

So what was hovering around a B- (seriously, the beginning is just really unpleasant and unsavory), ends up going down several notches, despite the middle portion when I couldn't tear myself away. I keep reading Brent because there's something about her voice and exploration of feminist themes that intrigue me, but I'm still waiting for her to hit all her beats and stick her landings.

Final Grade = C-