Curling Up With A Good Book: 5 Star Review & ARC Giveaway: Dear Killer (Katherine Ewell)

Saturday, January 18, 2014

5 Star Review & ARC Giveaway: Dear Killer (Katherine Ewell)

Hardcover, 368 pages
Expected publication: April 1st 2014 by Katherine Tegen Books
ARC Provided by Publisher for an Honest Review

Rule One—Nothing is right, nothing is wrong.Rule Two—Be careful.Rule Three—Fight using your legs whenever possible, because they’re the strongest part of your body. Your arms are the weakest.Rule Four—Hit to kill. The first blow should be the last, if at all possible.Rule Five—The letters are the law.

Kit takes her role as London’s notorious “Perfect Killer” seriously. The letters and cash that come to her via a secret mailbox are not a game; choosing who to kill is not an impulse decision. Every letter she receives begins with “Dear Killer,” and every time Kit murders, she leaves a letter with the dead body. Her moral nihilism and thus her murders are a way of life—the only way of life she has ever known.But when a letter appears in the mailbox that will have the power to topple Kit’s convictions as perfectly as she commits her murders, she must make a decision: follow the only rules she has ever known, or challenge Rule One, and go from there.Katherine Ewell’s Dear Killer is a sinister psychological thriller that explores the thin line between good and evil, and the messiness of that inevitable moment when life contradicts everything you believe.

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18-year-old author of YA thriller DEAR KILLER, to be published by HarperCollins in April 2014. Stanford freshman, horse lover, avid reader, science and sci-fi lover, girly-girl, geek.

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I have seen some mixed reviews for this book and to tell you the truth...that is exactly why I wanted to read it. A book that brings about so many different opinions is exactly what I love to read and I absolutely LOVED this book. It was so different than anything I have ever read and I adored it. I mean a teenage serial killer?? UMMM YEAH!!!! This book was just so disturbingly creepy...and I LOVED IT....

"Rule One. Nothing is right, nothing is wrong.

That is the most important guideline, and the hardest one for most people to understand-but I have understood it my entire life, from the moment I laid my hands on the first victim's neck to this very moment as I think about the blood under my fingernails and the body I have so recently left behind. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. For some people a thing may be right, and for others it may be wrong. There is no greater truth to morality-it is merely an opinion."

The main character, Kit, is a high school student who lives a normal life except for the fact that secretly she is London's notorious serial killer who is called the Perfect Killer. Kit has a mailbox that she uses to take new "cases." People write to her and send her money to perform the killings. Kit reads each letter and does intense research to ensure that the people that are to be killed have earned this. She does not fulfill any requests that she doesn't believe are warranted. Kit is very meticulous and knows what she is doing. She leaves no evidence, no witnesses, and has the police completely stumped. This is her life. This is what she does for a living and she is great at it.

Kit is a phenomenal character and I loved to see how she interacted with people around her and how she performs these murders with no remorse what so ever. Her character is just so wild. She knows what she is doing and she is extremely intelligent and her demeanor is well above her age.

One particular letter she gets brings her to question everything she has done and to rethink her life as the Perfect Killer.

"It was hard sometimes, watching the news when my mother turned it on while she made dinner, seeing blood on the television screen. The news people were always so preoccupied with it. Murders in London, turmoil in the Middle East, videos of people being shot in the streets, pictures of children who vanished and were found decapitated in the woods three months later. And every time the began to talk about violence, things bubbled up within me. Many emotions, but two were the most dominant: irritation with those who killed for the wrong reasons, and impatience for the day that I would again have the power of life and death."

I was completely absorbed in this book and everything it had to offer. I must truly say that it is different than ANYTHING I have ever read before. It is wild, emotional, disturbing, and all together FASCINATING. It is also one of those books that you will either love or you wont and I hope that anyone who reads it falls under the category of LOVE. This is a stand-alone novel and that is one thing that I did not like because I want more Kit...I want more of the Perfect Killer.

There is so much that I want to say about this book but it is really one that you have to read yourself...experience yourself...and hopefully become as obsessed with it as I was. Each chapter was something new and fascinating. With Kit you just never know what you are going to get.

Katherine Ewell has made her mark in the YA industry with this phenomenal debut novel and I will be looking forward to anything she writes in the future.