You Killed Me First by John Marrs

From reading online reviews, I think I am probably falling at the less popular end of the spectrum. As someone who loves to write and dreams of someday being published, I find it hard to critique other writers work if it involves any negativity at all. I can think it but I don’t want to say it out loud. I am always and forever in awe of anyone who puts their writing out for public reading. 

So bear with me as I try to do what in no way comes naturally to me…

Could I put this book down? No.

Would I recommend it? To be honest, probably no too.

The story is based on the lives of three different women, Liv, Margot and Anna, who form a friendship (or “fiendship”) that is based very much on the fact they live beside each other rather than they have anything in common… or so it seems. The story begins with Bonfire Night and the narrative that a woman is trapped inside the fire as it is about to be lit. Flashing back to months previous, the story tends to jump back and forth between the past and present of the individual lives of these three women, giving the reader tiny pieces of info about each character in order to slowly reveal who is in the fire, and why.

I found the format to be quite over the place and not in a gripping thriller type of way but more in a slightly over the place way. I didn’t feel the end really added up either and I kept going back to different chapters and pages to try and make sense of it. I felt it could have been ended a wee bit earlier and then the end would have held a bit more sense. 

I understood the premise of the book, I’m just not sure on the way it was executed. I finished it in order to change my perception of it but unfortunately it didn’t do that.

There were plenty of twists and turns but I felt the plot lost itself. Some bits felt as though they were added in just for the shock factor but didn’t really, for me, add anything of great value to the overall storyline of characters development.

But writing is subjective and not everything will be everyone’s cup of tea so don’t let me put you off, this was just the humble opinion of little old me.