The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The main reason I enjoyed this book is the impressive way in which Peter Swanson sucked me into Lily Kintner’s psyche. I was originally repulsed by her philosophy of ending lives (and still am, tbh) but as the book progressed, I desperately wanted her to get away with all the marbles. Conversely, her murderous spree went from most to least justified, I felt, over the course of the novel, which only served to highlight how masterful the writing was in getting me to empathize more with her as it went on.

I also find it intriguing that I found the women in the book to be, overall, far more sympathetic than the men, who were all at least some degree of repulsive. Swanson pulls no punches in displaying the tawdry underbelly of the human psyche, in all its cheap, short-sighted selfishness, and I wonder if it says something about me in that I understood exactly where most of the women were coming from (with the exception of Lily’s mother, but that could be because she was viewed solely through the prism of Lily’s fears.)

A solid psychological thriller, with a lot of twists and turns, and an impressive ability to make a monster (or several of them, to be fair) sympathetic.