I won a giveaway for this book thanks to Halo Scot and LibraryThing, honored through BookSirens.
Disclaimer: I would not recommend this book to anyone. I don't want anyone to know that I read some of the scenes and somehow chose to keep going.
I wouldn't call this a great book, but I must admit it is the most creative, unique, and definitely disturbing book that I have read all year.
The Wolf of Wall Street meets something horrifyingly traumatic (like that time I watched The Hills Have Eyes, but less inbred).
Alex is a CEO of a fortune 500 company funded by blood and corruption. Sounds like the normal corporate world if you ask me, but I'm no pro.
He is a father of two twin girls and is an absolute mess of a father, totally failing them in so many ways, yet he claims everything he does is for them. (Luckily they have a wonderful nanny, my favorite character Georgina.) His corporation is their legacy, although not a legacy any normal parent would want for their children.
"Trying his best" since the loss of his wife to cancer, he is trying to juggle a company, murder, and mayhem while still being a father (on occasion). When he is approached with a massive paying job offer, it could be his way out of the dark, a chance for a new start for him and his kids. Maybe even a new shot at love.
The twists that happen are not what I was expecting. I won't underestimate Scot again.
Side note; it's unrealistic that every elderly parental couple would be in same sex partnerships, but I respect the inclusion regardless.
Interesting book, unlike anything I've read before. While parts of it were very difficult to read, it did maintain my interest and was hard to put down! I liked the way the points of view changed from one character to another in each chapter. This book is definitely not for the squeamish! I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I absolutely LOVED Halo Scot’s new dark thriller, I WILL KILL YOU. So much fun! Alex is both the CEO of a fortune 500 company and he also does “NQA” or no questions asked work. He’s in a dark place after the death of his wife and counts on his nanny Georgina to manage the day to day caring for his two young twin daughters. Alex doesn’t balk at the dark stuff. He’ll take pretty much any job. And then someone comes to him asking him to blow up a building as revenge and the plot thickens. This novel was so amazing for several reasons. The first is the fun, snarky writing voice. I love Halo Scot’s irreverent writing style and the way the voice of the novel had me cackling on every page. The second is the characters. I enjoyed Alex, especially in the scenes with his kids, which were my favorites with him. You can see the love he has for his daughters as they’re making failed stegosaurus pancakes. I LOVED nanny Georgina. She was ruthless and so great. And oh, I loved how the twist ending of the novel caught me by surprise in the best way. Really well done!
One of my favorite quotes from the book:
“You’ll lose everyone and everything. It doesn’t make you broken. It makes you human. Life is about shared experience, shared trauma and shared healing.”
I wish that was all I had to say to show how great of a book this is!
I do admit I wasn't sure I would get through this book at first as 1st person is a little weird but I am glad I kept going.
If you like dark, disturbing and just plain psychotic then this is a great read. Scot manages to drag you into the depravity as Bob the voice inside the MCs head. You get to see the lengths this loving father is willing to go to for his kids.
I like the writing style of this author, different from others. It’s like he is writing a journal and talking to “bob” which is us the reader. I find “Alex” the main character likeable even he kills for a living.
He has one last job to do. At 80% the twist is like wtf
I Will Kill You is a dark psychological thriller that verges on horror on more than one occasion. Laced with a dark sense of humour, this is the story of a psychopath working in corporate America. The plot seems straightforward at first, but it quickly veers into unique and disturbing directions.
The book is told primarily from the first-person point of view of Alessandro “Alex” Osman, a psychopath. One of the strengths of the story is his narration. The writing style reminds me of the TV show Dexter, as Alex is addressing the audience directly with wry commentary about the human condition. The book is a little slow to start, as the narration takes up a good chunk of the first few chapters, but the pacing later picks up speed, taking us through a story that rapidly devolves into unsettling content. There are a few other POV scenes provided throughout the book, but they weren’t quite as riveting as Alex’s, and they were mostly interesting, except for a few that were fortunately not particularly lengthy and provided additional information to support the twists as they were revealed later on.
The twists are surprising, but what really makes this book stand out is the gory scenes. Scot doesn’t pull any punches, and I was definitely grimacing a few times. These scenes sometimes felt a little too gratuitous—and they made me want to crack out my old anatomy and physiology textbooks to try to figure out how these victims could still be alive with what he was doing to them. While it felt like these scenes might have been written just for shock value, (rather than contributing to the plot), I did feel like they served as icing on the bloody cake, making the book more memorable.
All this said – Be forewarned before checking out this book—I’m pretty sure the novel at least grazes all the triggers out there.
I recommend this book to those who appreciate gratuitous gore in their fiction and want to read a disturbing story about a serial killer that has multiple surprising twists.
