The premise for author Katherine Ewell’s Dear Killer sounded interesting and I went into the novel not quite sure what to expect. The idea of having a character who is literally the perfect killer who can get away with any murder she commits sounded pretty awesome. The fact that it’s just a tiny teenage girl sounded even better. However after finishing the novel I have to admit that it wasn’t what I expected in the slightest.

Dear Killer is the story of a teenage girl named Kit. A rich man’s daughter and the daughter to a woman who was once London’s perfect killer. Since then, Kit’s mother has trained her to become the next perfect killer who receives letters that read Dear Killer… and ask Kit to assassinate a person that the sender believes is fit to die. Each killing comes with a price. While the pay is nice and the thrill of the kill sates Kit’s hunger, she leaves behind the letter at the site of the murder as true payment. Then, Kit is sent a letter than makes her question everything she has ever known. Everything her mother has ever taught her and every rule she has ever followed soon becomes blurred as Kit tries to figure out where she truly stands.

I had high hopes for Dear Killer. I was hoping for a novel that would be about a strong female character who would carry the story and have a quick pace. However, Dear Killer wasn’t exactly that. There is no denying that Kit is a skilled martial artist and that some of her thought processes are brilliant but she falls into a category that I can’t exactly stand behind: she’s a Mary Sue.

For those who don’t know what that means, Kit is a character who is conventionally perfect. Perfect face. Perfect bod. Perfect life. Miss perfect. Because of this, not only is Kit a character who is cocky and arrogant (which is fine, in fact I love those traits in characters) but she comes off as a character without flaws. I have to say that this is the reason I couldn’t enjoy Dear Killer as much as I would have liked. Kit does a lot of questionable things that don’t scream “Perfect killer” but instead make the reader scream “Girl, what the heck are you doing?” Half of the events that bring about Kit’s downfall are brought on by the protagonist herself.

Apart from this, there are a few plot holes in the novel that made the realism of there being a ‘perfect killer’ not as realistic. The most prominent of them being the fact that letters are sent to Kit’s household for her to see who wants to be killed off. This raises the question of: a) Is her address just available for people who are looking for a killer? and b) how have the police not used the fact that the killer’s address is available to… track the killer? Not only this leaves me uncertain of Kit’s reputation as the perfect killer but the fact that many of the killing scenes (though very well-written) didn’t exactly seem as flawless in hindsight.

Ewell’s writing is one of the few positive things in the novel. Her writing is smooth, concise and flows well. There were instances where the plot would be in a decent place and Ewell’s writing would leave me able to envision everything playing out in my mind like a movie. I really hope that Ewell will write more in the future. Her writing style is unique and I would love to see more of it in a different story.

Dear Killer ends on a cliff-hanger. I will admit that it wasn’t what I expected but I’m not sure how I feel about a sequel. Regardless, I would recommend Dear Killer to readers who are fans of action and mystery novels and to any readers who want to read a novel from the point of view of a character conflicted with what is right and wrong.

Dear Killer is not a book that would be enjoyed by everyone. I even have a feeling that a significant amount of readers will hate and burn it. For starters, the main character of this book is not someone that you can really call a “heroine.” Kit Ward is not the girl who will save the day. On the contrary, she’s the dragon who needs to be slain by your knight in shining armor. And the most disturbing thing is that she has a very disturbing view about morality.

 

Kit’s first rule in life is: There’s no right or wrong. To her, such notions are based on perspective. Every time she murders someone, she remains cool and indifferent about it. She’s not even haunted by the memories of her victims because everything is just a job to her. But suddenly, things made a significant turn when she killed someone who isn’t a part of her job. She started questioning herself, her rules, her beliefs. She even went as far as going into a killing slump.

 

Kit’s development as a character was really interesting to follow even if I couldn’t relate to her. I mean, how could I? I have never understood the workings of a killer’s mind. Though she got to a point where she almost regretted her actions as a murderer, she really didn’t work hard to redeem herself. The opposite actually happened. She got more determined to kill due to another crazy realization. At that point, I was already asking myself if I am as crazy as Kit because I wasn’t disgusted with the path that she chose in the end. And trust me, it was horrifying but it only fuelled my interest. I guess that I really had an open mind when I dove into Dear Killer. And there were times that I was able to put myself in Kit’s shoes enabling me to see things from her point of view.

 

It’s not only Kit that caught my attention. Her relationship with her mother made a disturbing impact on me. Yes, Kit might be worthy of eternal condemnation but can we really blame her? Her killer mother raised her to believe that that there’s no right or wrong and that they could kill any person as long as the others deemed it. To whom would you lay the blame?

 

With a philosophical vibe and definitely thought-provoking, Dear Killer is not without its faults. My enjoyment went a few notches down after identifying some glaring plotholes along the way. I am not a cop and I don’t have any idea how they investigate serial killings but this book really put the Scotland Yard police force in a very bad light. In here,they look like a bunch of incompetent idiots who never found any leads about Kit Ward when the evidences are as clear as daylight. And hurrah, you will also find that it is easy for a 16-year old turning 17 girl to befriend a cop-cum-detective. And to make matters more unbelievable, that 16 year old is allowed to go to crime scenes and her opinions are even sought out by the police. I could hardly suspend my disbelief.

 

Luckily enough, the theme explored by the book was enough to keep me hooked until the end. Dear Killer does not draw its power from the grisly killings nor from the chilling thoughts of our MC. Disregarding the blood lust of Kit, she’s a very likable person and her thoughts are not that morbid to make you shiver. Dear Killer is more of a philosophical story than a thriller/mystery one. It plants seeds of doubts in your mind. It causes you to question your beliefs. It makes you wonder how laws came to be. And eventually, it will compel you to think deeply of morality.

 

Overall, Dear Killer was a remarkable read with its rousing premise and realistic ending. It didn’t wow me but it’s the kind of story that will stay with you for the days to come. Highly recommended for those people who are fascinated with morality and for those who want to read a YA novel with zero romance. Yep, you’ve read that right.

 

***An e-ARC of this book was freely provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, Harper Collins and Katherine Tegen Books!***

Have you ever heard of Axe Cop?

Axe Cop is the creation of a five-year-old boy. Five-year-olds come up with weird characters in the course of pretend play all the time. However, this particular child, Malachai Nicolle, has an older brother named Ethan who happens to be a comic-book writer and illustrator. Ethan Nicolle is a very nice guy who enjoys the time he spends playing with Malachai, and who was amused by the concept of Axe Cop, a police officer who fights crime with the help of a fireman axe. The whole time they were playing, Ethan recalls, “I was thinking, ‘This could be a funny comic.’”

And it is. You can buy the books, or go online to watch the animated series based on the Nicolle brothers’ creation. (Ethan insists on giving full author credit to young Malachai, though I have the feeling he does a hefty amount of editing – especially when Malachai comes up with characters whose resemblance to existing comic heroes borders on copyright violation.)

The joy of reading Axe Cop is very specific. It relies entirely on whether you take pleasure from very young children’s ideas of how the universe works.

For instance: In the first issue, Axe Cop takes his new partner (Flute Cop) to the land of volcanoes to defeat a gang of dinosaurs. They are successful, of course; but in the course of the battle, Flute Cop gets dinosaur blood on him:

The dinosaur blood caused Flute Cop to unexpectedly transform into a dinosaur soldier! And so they became...Axe Cop and Dinosaur Soldier!

Later, Dinosaur Soldier eats an avocado:

The avocado caused Dinosaur Soldier to turn into an avocado that can shoot avocado out of his hands. “I’m Avocado Soldier now.”

Axe Cop’s parents are named Bobber and Gobber Smartist. Oh, and Flute Cop – I mean, Avocado Soldier – is actually Axe Cop’s brother.

Wait – so how come Axe Cop didn’t recognize his only sibling when he held tryouts for a partner? And why didn’t then-Flute Cop notice that the man he was auditioning for was his dear baby brother Axey Smartist?

One day they were both walking backwards. They hit their heads so hard that they forgot everything, even one another.

Oh.

Axe Cop is definitely a pass-or-fail test for readers. Either you can’t get enough of this kind of thing, or it leaves you cold.

I happen to adore listening to kids pretend aloud. It was the best part of all those years I spent babysitting. (Okay – that, and when the kids decided my long hair was perfect for playing beauty shop. As long as they didn’t cut it or paint it, I was putty in their hands. But I digress.)

All this is the reason Dear Killer worked for me. For a while.

Dear Killer was written by a seventeen-year-old. Specifically, a seventeen-year-old who managed to get a publisher interested in her written game of Let’s Pretend.

Considering that this game involves a seventeen-year-old serial killer, it’s surprisingly cozy for a surprising length of time. At least it was for me for as long as I could pretend I was the grownup in the room while a child explained the rules of her universe to me.

“So, there’s this girl? And everybody thinks she’s just a girl? But really, she’s a killer. Only nobody knows she’s a killer.”

“Why does she kill people, sweetheart?”

“It’s her job.”

(trying to keep a straight face) “Wow. Her job? You mean she works for the government or something?”

“No! The government doesn’t know about her! Nobody knows about her! Except her mom.”

“Oh. So she told her mom she kills people? Wasn’t her mom mad?”

“No! It was her mom’s idea! Her mom told her to kill people!”

“Wait – I thought you said it was the girl’s job. Killing people, I mean.”

“It is! It was her mom’s job, and now it’s her job!”

(completely lost) “Oh. But how does she get paid?”

(almost bouncing up and down with excitement) “There’s a restaurant, right? And everyone thinks the women’s restroom there is haunted? And if you leave a letter asking the girl to please kill somebody for you, she might do it. But you have to put money in the letter, too. Or she won’t kill the person you want her to.”

(head spinning) “But – how do the people know she’s a killer and she’ll kill people for them?”

“They don’t know she’s a killer, but they know somebody is!”

“But they know the killer’s a girl?”

“No! Nobody knows! Nobody knows who it is! In fact, everybody thinks it’s a guy! But really it’s this girl! And she’s the perfect killer! Nobody can ever catch her!”

“She must be really good at it. So – only girls ask her to kill people? Girls and women, I mean.”

(scornfully) “No! Everybody does!”

“But you have to leave the letters in the women’s restroom...”

“So?”

“Well, wouldn’t people notice if men went in there?”

“No!”

“Um...”

“THEY JUST DON’T.”

“Okay, honey. Okay. So they go in there with their letters and – what do they do with them?”

(happy again) “There’s a special secret hiding place in one of the toilet stalls! Everybody knows about it! She calls it her mailbox! She goes and checks her mail, and all the letters are there! She takes all the letters and all the money, and then she kills whichever people she feels like killing!”

“But wouldn’t the people who work there notice if she goes to that same restroom every day?”

“She doesn’t go every day! She doesn’t want people to notice her ‘cause then she might get caught, so she only goes, like, once every couple of months!”

“But, sweetie – if everybody knows about this secret hiding place, and she doesn’t empty it every day, how does she stop other people from taking the money before she can?”

(shocked) “That would be stealing!”

And that’s just the premise. I didn’t mark any of that as a spoiler, because it’s all in the first chapter.

You’d be forgiven for expecting Avocado Soldier to show up and fight The Perfect Killer. That would be marginally more realistic than what does go on to happen.

Initially – longer than I should have been, really – I was charmed enough by this sense of being in someone’s “let’s pretend” world to enjoy this book. If this had been treated the way Axe Cop was – as an amusing idea by an engagingly creative young story-spinner – it might have worked.

But this book takes itself the wrong kind of seriously. And it insists the reader take it seriously, too. And no thinking reader could. Even if readers don’t know every detail of how a successful dead drop works, they’d easily figure out how epically this one fails. And that’s not the only flaw in Dear Killer’s set-up. Not by a long shot.

The people who told this young writer she had talent were right to do so. The ones who went on to publish her story as she wrote it did her a great disservice.

I’d love to say more, but I have to go catch up on my reading. Axe Cop has a new sidekick named Uni-Baby. She has a magical horn that grants wishes.

Now that I’ve finished Dear Killer, I need a dose of that kind of realism.

My review of "No Wake Zone" by Linda Lovely was published in Audiobook Monthly Magazine! Like Dream Student by J.J. DiBenedetto my review was featured in Volume 2 of this wonderful new magazine.

And here is my review of "No Wake Zone":

"In the nearer term, I think various developments in biotechnology and synthetic biology are quite disconcerting. We are gaining the ability to create designer pathogens, and there are these blueprints of various disease organisms that are in the public domain – you can download the gene sequence for smallpox or the 1918 flu virus from the Internet." -Nick Bostrom

"Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire." – Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Marley is more than ready for a vacation. After her adventures in "Dear Killer", the first in the Marley Clark mystery series, going home to visit her 79-year-old feisty aunt May and her much-loved cousin Ross in small-town Iowa seems just the thing to relax. Boy, has Marley got it wrong.

Volunteering at the last-minute to waitress for Cousin Ross on his double-decker excursion boat, “The Queen”, Marley is surprised to find that the wedding reception for local billionaire Jake Olsen is to celebrate his marriage to her best friend from college, Darlene Sherbert. But the surprises don’t stop there as Marley witnesses Jake flying over the stern of the Queen and into the icy Okoboji lake waters. Diving to the rescue Marley, a 52-year-old retired Army colonel, finds herself not thanked for her attempted rescue, but instead relegated to leading the suspect list. What’s a retired Army intelligence officer to do, but investigate?

Convoluted, vicious family battles over the will lead police on a wild chase, as family members drop dead one after the other. Things get worse when one of Marley’s old enemies, Quentin Hamilton, arrives on the scene. Tasked with protecting not only Jake, but also his biotech empire, losing his client is sure to drive Hamilton wild. And who better to subject to his ire than Marley, whose recommendation he believes cost Hamilton an important military contract?

While furiously jealous heirs brawling over a billion dollar inheritance seems the most logical reason for bodies falling left, right, and sideways, all is not as it seems. For the situation is much direr than first assumed. Jake’s firm conducts biological materials research for the military – and missing materials are killing the heirs.

"Our conversation veered to the topic of scientific advances and their potential for good or evil."

With help from her cousin Ross, her former Pentagon boss, General Irvine, and FBI agent Sherry Weaver, Marley must help find the murderer before more die, and before the biologicals originally meant to save lives instead slaughter millions. At the same time Marley must protect her aunt, while also enjoying a blooming relationship with local attorney Duncan James.

What happens, and why, makes for an edge-of-your seat thrill ride which will keep you guessing. Linda Lovely balances suspense and thrills with a strong theme of family, both the good aspects and the bad. Marley is one of my new favorite heroines. Sure, she is a retiree, but she is still a vivacious and active woman, with a healthy sex drive to boot. Marley, all of us “Boomer Ladies” salute you!
__________________________________
I received No Wake Zone from the author via Audiobook Monthly in return for my honest review. As you can tell, I enjoyed the book immensely. I have spent hundreds of hours enjoying audio books, from literary classics like "Frankenstein" and "Little Women" to modern stories of the quirky, the romantic, the terrifying and everything in between. What is not to like? I can listen to my books while doing other things such as quilting or knitting, or even working in my flower beds. Or I can simply curl up in a chair with a quilt and a cup of tea, close my eyes, and enter a new and wonderful world.

The pleasure of an exceptional narrator can add further levels of enjoyment, actually making me part of the story. Sadly, the narrator for "No Wake Zone" falls into the “not as pleasurable” zone for this reader, however this is solely a case of personal preference.

Overall, I truly enjoyed Linda Lovely’s No Wake Zone and have purchased "Dear Killer" the first in the Marley Clark series. However, I purchased the electronic version rather than the Audible edition to increase my reading pleasure. I will also be watching closely for Ms. Lovely’s next Marley Clark adventure, "With Neighbors Like These."

I received No Wake Zone from Susan Keefe, CEO of Audiobook Monthly in return for a realistic review for her magazine. All thoughts are my own.

Check out the Linda’s commentary on Audiobookmonthly (dot) com

Author Information:

A native of Iowa, Linda Lovely has called the South home for more than thirty years. She lives with her husband beside a peaceful South Carolina lake, where she regularly perturbs the geese and one honking big turtle by jumping off her dock for a swim or pedaling (yes, pedaling not paddling) her kayak.

Linda is a member of Romance Writers of America (RWA), Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and the South Carolina Writers Workshop. She feels quite lucky to have found both close friends and exceptional critique partners—snarky, funny, talented and generous—through these writer organizations.

**MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD**

3.5/5

OVERALL IMPRESSION: I'm intrigued by the plot. It's a really strange and twisted situation, which makes for good reading in my eyes.

I did not like the ending at all. For me, a perfect ending would have been Kit killing Alex and getting away with everything. And that being her last murder, she moves with her mom and starts over with a normal life, with nobody ever finding out. I feel like Kit giving herself up at the end goes against her personality and is not something that she would choose to do.

CHARACTERS: I liked Maggie a lot, so it was kind of hard for me reading this knowing that Kit was planning on killing her. I was kind of hoping that she would change her mind, but I also knew if she did change her mind that would go against everything she has ever known and the rules that keep her in line.

COVER: The cover is okay. I like the script in the background that looks like it could be one of the letters she receives.

**I received an ARC of this book from Amazon Vine for my honest review.