A review by shamelesslyintroverted
How I'll Kill You by Ren DeStefano

4.0

I want to know what Ren DeStefano’s research process was like. Her search history for this book must be wild! 

I absolutely loved this book. Honestly, it's probably my biggest surprise of the year! While the premise interested me, I didn't expect much. The cover is gorgeous, and I thought the vibes would be perfect for a warm-weather thriller. 

I was right. 

I love how we don’t know the main character’s name. We know her as Sissy, which is the name she goes by with her sisters (to murder people), and the fake name she donned for this specific mark. 

As mentioned in my reading update, I love the writing. It makes murder seem romantic and poetic. Sissy really believes that she must kill this man, even though she’s falling in love with him. 

Super quick and... I thought it would be easy to read. Grab the popcorn, but... would a popcorn thriller bring you to tears multiple times? I don't know. It gets a bit heavy when the twists start happening and it becomes more of a self-discovery journey. 

The only reason I'm knocking a star off is because of the ending. I feel like the ending kind of went against her inner dialogue. I go into spoilers below, but I do recommend this book with my whole chest. You should read it.

She waxed poetic about killing this guy and sincerely liked the idea of it. I found it hard to believe that in the end she didn't want anything to do with murdering the marks. I know that this was going to be her first one and her main job was cleaning up to protect her sisters, but at the beginning she was into it. I also get that feelings change as you get to know someone, especially if your initial plan was to kill them. So, why couldn't we make it a complete growth in that area? We don't have to disregard all her initial thoughts and claim that she's NEVER ever ever showed any interest in doing the killing, because I feel like that isn't true. 

Since we're also talking about spoilers, I'll sneak this in here too. I loved Iris. She was my favorite sister and when her twist was revealed, that just deepened the feeling for me. I knew she wasn't as hard as she was leading since she took forever to recover from a kill. But the way that she died was poetic and I sobbed. 

I also loved Moody and how she killed Dara. It's twisted as fuck and I loved it, specifically the way it was written. It was gentle and slow, comfortable almost... feeding her meds to cause Dara to OD in the bathtub. 

I also loved Colin and how Sissy/Emily felt like she had to hide her relationship with him. Omg and how her name wasn't revealed until the very end. This book was just so well written. I was fish on a hook the entire time.