Kate’s Review: “This Girl’s A Killer”

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Book: “This Girl’s a Killer” by Emma C. Wells

Publishing Info: Poisoned Pen Press, September 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Meet Cordelia Black. Cordelia loves exactly three things: her chosen family composed of her best friend Diane and her goddaughter; her hairdresser (worth every penny plus tip); and killing bad men.

By day she’s a successful pharmaceutical rep with a pristine reputation and a designer wardrobe. By night she’s culling South Louisiana of unscrupulous men—monsters who always seem to evade justice, until they meet her. It’s a complicated yet fulfilling life that requires complete and total control at all times. But when the evening news starts throwing around the words “serial killer,” pressure heightens for her in the South, and it’s only exacerbated when Diane starts dating a man Cordelia isn’t sure is a good person—someone who might unravel everything Cordelia has worked for. Soon Cordelia’s world spirals, and she loses her grip on those tightly held threads that keep her safe.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

Horrorpalooza is over, and now I start to work back towards the books that I read before October that didn’t fit a horror theme to fit within that month’s review schematics. We had a cartel thriller on Saturday, and now we get back to good old fashioned women’s centric thrillers with Emma C. Wells’s novel “This Girl’s a Killer”. This has been on my list for awhile now, and now the time has finally arrived. With admittedly mixed results.

There were definitely things that did work, however. Most obviously to me is that I do love stories like this, with sarcastic and quippy morally grey narrators doing pretty terrible things but for fairly understandable reasons. I enjoy the idea of a pharma rep named Cordelia (I just kept thinking of Cordelia Chase from “Buffy”) being professional and put together by day, and then murdering abusive and violent men by night after the legal system fails to do anything about them. I enjoyed the story arc at hand, with her having an ‘oh shit’ moment when finding out that her company is recalling the drug she uses for her schemes (as it works SO WELL to knock men out you see), and then things slowly falling more and more out of control. Partially because she kind of starts dating a cop, partially because she really hates her best friend Diane’s new boyfriend. The thriller aspects are more about how and whether she will get away with her crimes, but it’s also a little tongue in cheek which gives it a bit of zip.

But on the flip side, it isn’t really anything that I haven’t seen before in the women’s centric poppy serial killer tale. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as I did find this book to be a very quick read and an entertaining one at that. After all, who doesn’t like to read about terrible predatory men getting justice doled out from a pissed off woman with a serial killing habit to feed? The problem is that Cordelia as a protagonist is trying to be “Promising Young Woman” vis a vis “Dexter”, but I didn’t feel like she had the complexities to back it up and is instead a bit of a caricature without the depth I was hoping for. Girlboss serial killer who loves her bestie and her high fashion labels and aesthetic is fine, but I was really hoping that she’d be a bit more interesting. I have similar criticisms for the supporting characters, with said bestie Diane being a little on the saccharine side and her daughter Samantha being precocious as hell bordering on a little unbelievable. As an escapist bloody romp this works, but I think that had the characters been stronger it really could have knocked it out of the park, and it didn’t quite get there.

It’s kind of strange to refer to a story about a serial killer in designer clothes as ‘cozy’ reading, but if you like thrillers you will probably feel that same vibe. Overall “This Girl’s a Killer” is pretty fluffy thriller fun that doesn’t take itself super seriously. I can dig that vibe this time of year.

Rating 6: Fun for what it is, but none of the characters moved outside of static two dimensional personalities and the story suffered for it.

Reader’s Advisory:

“This Girl’s a Killer” is included on the Goodreads list “Best Serial Killer Books”.