Katy Brent - How to Kill Men and Get Away With It

Meet Kitty Collins.
FRIEND. LOVER. KILLER.
He was following me. That guy from the nightclub who wouldn’t leave me alone.
I hadn’t intended to kill him of course. But I wasn’t displeased when I did and, despite the mess I made,
I appeared to get away with it.
That’s where my addiction started…
I’ve got a taste for revenge and quite frankly, I’m killing it.

Comment: I got this book by impulse the last time I purchased physical books in a shop (as opposed to order online). It was Christmas time and I was contemplating getting it to give to a friend but the premise was so crazy I felt I would want to try it for myself.

Kitty Collins is a young rich influencer who has a very privileged life and one night, after trying to discourage a man who went after her when she left a bar, she is followed by that man and due to an accident, he ends up dying. This affects Kitty in such a way that she starts thinking she has the time and the motivation to erase the world of men who prey on women, especially if they had said no already. The problem is that the rush and the planning are quite the commitments once she embarks in this quest and perhaps it's not doable with falling in love and having time for this person. Or is it?

The premise if really wild, in the sense this book does not have the atmosphere nor the gravitas for this to be a traditional thriller. It is one after all, but I wasn't too impressed with the execution. It's the first book I try by this author so I had no real expectation when it came to writing, but to me the issue is that something was not matching properly. The author added a note (at least my edition had one) in the end where she mentions her inspiration and I can see why the #MeToo movement might be an interesting inspiration, but the execution failed, for me.

The biggest problem to me - and for the majority of the readers whose grade is the same and/or lower than mine that I've seen in GR - is that no character is likable. There isn't one person in this story one could root for. Of course, in thrillers this isn't imperative anyway, but since this isn't a traditional thriller, I've found the lack of connection to be a very negative point. Killing others is never something one can consider to be good, but the idea here of having a woman killing as if she is a vigilante type of person who only chooses bad men is quite the message... too bad about the execution.

Kitty narrates the story and from the start we are given a negative view of her because of all the privileges she has and of all the negative connotations associated with people who have the type of life Kitty describes as having. I suppose this was done so that the distinction of class could be a reason for how Kitty is able to hide her killer side and get away with it for so long. At the same time, this makes Kitty seem like a careless, whiny woman. Her actions lost all kinds of "morality greyness" they could still have just by the fact she was being so obnoxious.

The method she uses to find her victims is also very ridiculous and with an agenda of course this makes her loose any reason she could use to want to punish these men, The fact things sometimes go wrong is just another detail that makes what she does distasteful. I'm thinking that the author probably wanted more of a satire, a social commentary on several current issues, but this story with these characters and written, sometimes, in a seemingly inconsiderate way, made the story loose any solidity she might have wanted to convey.

While Kitty is dealing with all her privileged influencer existence's dilemmas and killing men, she discovers she has a stalker. I wondered if the idea was to add drama and a "conscious voice" to her actions, after all if she knew someone was watching and judging, would this affect her choices? It turns out that it doesn't and we simply need to accept that Kitty is a killer with no real boundary of what is good or not, despite any attempt at justifying herself. I thought, surely, this story had to go on to the path in which Kitty is caught and sentenced to jail, but... not really.

In fact, this is another way this was a disappointment, because the story is superficial and is written in an dismissive way, as if the content is yet another silly plot one can find in countless other books. To make matters worse, in my opinion of course, the stalker issue goes on to develop in an even sillier situation, which seems to come out of nowhere. I think this is the author's debut so I will not say all had to be perfect, but other debuts seem more consistently presented, so I think how the editors could let this be published as a thriller... perhaps this more a dark comedy or something (although I'd say it was not fun either) and should only be labeled as such.

Since nothing of what I assumed would be the goal here actually happened, I was feeling pretty disappointed. Then I saw there's a sequel, so... but to be honest, even if Kitty pays her dues, I don't feel that interested anymore. Perhaps this idea written differently would be a better plot but most of the author's choices felt they weren't suitable. If that was the goal anyway, then it wasn't well executed.

This book was worth it for the idea and for the easy way the text did flow, meaning it was easy to keep turning the pages.

Grade: 5/10