How to Kill Men and Get Away with It | Katy Brent | Book Review

How to Kill Men and Get Away with It by Katy Brent
PLOT: 4/5
CHARACTERS: 2.5/5
ENTERTAINMENT: 3/5
OVERALL: 3.5/5
Genre: Thriller, Contemporary Fiction, Crime Fiction
Themes: Women in Crime

“He doesn’t look like a monster though. But they don’t, do they? Otherwise, they’d never get the opportunity to be monsters.”

–        Katy Brent, How to Kill Men and Get Away with It

The story as it goes

Kitty Collins is a famous influencer with over a million followers on Instagram, who absolutely adore her lifestyle and her vegan ways of living. Her lifestyle includes meetings, brunches, and dinners at fancy places and showcasing the products received from PR companies on her page.

One night, after a party at the nightclub, Kitty is followed home by a guy who wouldn’t leave her alone and would not take NO for an answer. During the course of the events, she accidentally pushes him causing his instant death.

She thought she would be caught, but when it appears that she has gotten away with it – the thrill, the glow she feels in her body is exhilarating and that’s where the addiction begins for Kitty.

Her taste for revenge, esp. with respect to men who wrong women, becomes very strong and she feels as if she is on a mission, until she does something completely wrong, messing up everything.

To top it all off – she also has a stalker who has followed her each and every move.

Are Kitty’s twisted ways of justice actually justified? 

Can one be too careful in whatever they do? 

Will people’s dark secrets unravel, bringing them to a justified end? 

Will Kitty’s thrill continue or will there be a permanent stop to it?

My thoughts 

When it comes to How to Kill Men and Get Away with It, I have mixed opinions. There are definitely things that I liked and some which I definitely didn’t.

How to Kill Men and Get Away with It Katy Brent Book

So let me start with what I liked.

Firstly, the cover and the title – I will be honest I picked this up only for its title and the cover.

Oh! how many times we women have cursed the opposite sex for their sometimes-absurd behaviour? Further, if one goes to see the crime rate, it will show the male population as the highest offender and even in this, so many go scot-free due to a lot of irregularities in the justice and legal system.

Coming to the whole plot. It was a very interesting plot. We have Kitty Collins who is definitely the female version of Dexter.

She goes about justifying the crimes she performs and gets away with it, partly because she is a famous influencer and nobody would look at her twice. Though even a half-decent police officer could have found a common denomination as she was present at all events related to the crime.

I have always been intrigued by the human mind and especially love psychological thrillers. Specifically, in this context, it is particularly intriguing as mental illnesses make one respond in so many different ways, affecting not only their lives but also those of people around them. When something like this is added to the storyline, we get a gripping tale, the types of which are one of my favourites.

In serious cases, we realise that a deranged mind, if not given the desired help, can cause serious damage and this book highlights that aspect.

I finished it in under 24 hours as I couldn’t put it down, (despite the below-mentioned negatives) I only wanted to know what Kitty will do next. There are aspects of the unreliable narrator but it went well with the story, having you turning page after page – which is a definite must in a thriller.

How to Kill Men and Get Away with It Katy Brent Book Review

Coming to what I didn’t like

Let’s start with how this book is very very graphic, right from the prologue. It has gory details. It’s gruesome, and these scenes do come every few chapters. So much so that it can be safely said that How to Kill Men and Get Away with It is definitely not for the weak-hearted.

For a person like me who is usually unfazed by it, the play-by-play account esp. of animal slaughter really got to me (I am a Jain vegetarian and I felt this was just criminal). So, if you are a vegan, vegetarian, animal lover, or just generally repulsed by cruelty, this book will surely give you the creeps.

Coming to the characters – all were annoying esp. Kitty, who was hypocritical. She hates being an influencer, cribs about it, and yet goes on to enjoy the perks of the lifestyle that her profession offers. Even her friends were quite shallow.

Summing up, the whole women’s safety episode (at night, while traveling alone and a woman having to take things into her own hands) was great, but vividly graphic accounts of all the gory stuff, and Kitty’s personality did leave a bad taste.

As a thriller lover though, leaving aside the gory details, I liked the story. So, before you decide to hop on to this ride, do check the trigger warnings on the various themes that the book serves.

Want to read it? Buy your copy of How to Kill Men and Get Away with It.

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