Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - How to Kill Men and Get Away With It

How to kill men but without the n.
This is how I felt reading this book.

I need to take a breath and mentally prepare myself for what's about to come.

I made a silly little joke at the start of this book, how to kill men but without the n. Little did I know I'd be so goddam right. I need healing after this book and not because of graphic murders (no I actually love those ones and they were barely even in the book) but because of all the cringe. I don't think I have ever dragged myself so much to finish a book. If this hadn't have started as a buddy read with my best friend I think it would have been my first DNF ever.

Where do I even start with this one? Oh I know let's start with the first page which instead of being flooded with praise should have had a fucking paragraph of trigger warnings. I've read some reviews and I see people giving a list of them (funny isn't it how we have to do the author's work) so I might do it as well as people deserve to know what they're getting themselves into.

We've got pedophilia, domestic abuse, sexual assault, gore, rape, gang rape, mentions of rape, incest, cruelty towards animals, eating disorders, substance abuse (drugs, alcohol), overdose, mentions of self-harm, mentions of suicide and I might as well add misogyny and sexism here.

And if we're still at the list of things this book needed, how about we add a fucking editor. There were grammatical mistakes, words not finished, sentences not finished and sentences that made zero sense all over the book.

I have to mention I have found some pretty questionable things in this book such as cultural appropriation and racism. Plus most of the characters were so problematic they made me want to throw this book out the window as our fmc shames her friends for having ED's or the love interest lets a rapist work in his company after he has had complaints from his female employees that they have been SA'd by said man only because he brings in a lot of money.

Every new character is introduced by the number of their Instagram followers and there are brand names dropped for literally everything, I think there were more brand names than killings in this book and that says it all. Also it is mentioned every couple of pages that the fmc is vegan like miss Katy I think we got it after the first time, there's no need to repeat that till the end of the book.

I'd say the lack of representation in this book is terrifying as we only have one token black side character and that's it but it goes much further than that as the characters' personalities, character development or the plot are nowhere to be found during the entirety of this book.

I have never been more disappointed and bored by a book before. Our fmc has a stalker and we find this out by the first chapters and by the end I got so bored by this book I didn't even have the energy or initiative of trying to guess who that might be. And keep in mind this stalker was the only interesting thing going on for basically the whole book and both me and the fmc forgot about its existence at least once. When we found out who it was I was like "okay cool how much till I finish this book?". It literally had none of the things that make a good psychological thriller but you know what it had instead? Smut. It has so much smut the chances of you opening the book and not finding a sex scene or sex related scene are almost below 0. I came here for the murder and I've left feeling like I had been reading a poorly written Wattpad fanfic. You know what screw that I have read BETTER fanfics than this so-called book. I have no idea how this shit even got published in the first place.

Let's leave aside the fact the killings were infinitesimal in a book whose title has the word kill in it, even the killings we did get were just so easy. The lack of research put into this book is so obvious it kills me. She gets away with it but most of the time it's only her stalker's hand that keeps her out of trouble. Everything is just too easy. We encounter police two times and it's the shittiest interaction ever.
How she's not caught when she lives in fucking London and leaves behind like a mount Everest amount of evidence is beyond me.

Oh and the characters? they were just plain and annoying af, our mc is the biggest pick me, she literally says and I quote "I'm not like these girls" and the love interest is just sexist but our fmc stays with him because they love each other (they said "I love you" after three dates THREE FUCKING DATES and after they have previously broken up).

And to end this nicely, the only thing I liked about this book was its title and its cover. It will look awesome on my shelves but that's it. I will never recommend this to anybody, it was painful to read and to actually finish this atrocity of a book.

Never again.

Content Warnings

a24564167's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

(Un)fortunately, this is not a step by step guide on how to actually kill men and get away with it, but it will fuel your misandry to incredible heights.
The actual murders are not realistically covered up

your phone can still trace your whereabouts even if you turn your data off, and posting an instagram post still links to a certain location….. but details, details

But it was a classic man-hating read that I enjoyed.

Content Warnings

mrshuisman's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.5

This book, though fun and entertaining, really could’ve used a TW for s*xual abuse and (r*pe) trauma

Content Warnings

themushroomforest's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Kitty is an upper middle-class Londoner with a lot of money, a lot of righteous anger, and a lot of free time.
So it's only natural that her favorite hobby is murder.

Good enough writing, but a grim story overall.
Overly privileged girl who can't see that she is so entitled, she even thinks other people's lives are hers.

I like the overall weight it gives to the ever current crisis of violence against women, but Kitty was far too irritating and problematic herself to be a vigilante I could get behind, even imaginarily.

To be honest I think I would have DNF'd it if I wasn't listening to the audiobook while doing a big load of housework. It felt more inconvenient to switch books than to just finish this one once I had started.

Was it funny at times? Yes. But was it also disturbing and weirdly normalising of violent and murderous behaviour based on personal assumptions about someone's character? Also yes.

Not recommended.

Content Warnings

ficteon's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I have a feeling people aren't seeing the main character like the villain she is. People see her as I read in the reviews as some feminist Batman, while she is actually an unredeemable murderer. Most deserved their murder sure, but some literally did not! Like at all! Ghosting a girl doesn't make you as evil as a rapist, and it doesn't give someone the go for killing you. And one was literally innocent and 18 years old! And her ex.. also didn't deserve it. She had no consequences at all! I hoped she would end up in prison, but I noticed the writer wanted to keep a sequel in mind, so that didn't happen. This doesn't mean it's immediately a bad book. (I only don't like the mindset people are excusing her just because she murders men??? Like?) A book can have an evil main character and still be good. I didn't love he character for her evilness and for her not being as smart as she thought she was (as using her 'miscarriage' would've been handy for her but she kept being upset people mention it. Like use it! You're already a murderer, so what's wrong with lying!)
She doesn't deserve a happy ending.. and she did get one. That makes me not love the book.
But I did enjoy a lot of parts. When the men did deserve their death it was okay to read about them brutally killing them.

The ending.. could've been more special. The last murder was like 2 words instead of the whole paragraphs of horror the other murders were.

Charlie deserves better.

Victoria deserves better.

The kid she killed deserves better. (Forgot his name. The brother of the football player)

The ghoster man deserved better

Kitty deserves prison. As she isn't better than the men she's killing. I mean she hates them for getting away with their horrible crimes while she does the same thing.

Content Warnings

bookdevourer's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

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