YA Books Podcast - Episode 53 - The Killer In Me

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"The Killer in Me" written by Margot Harrison was published on July 12, 2016 by Disney Hyperion.

https://www.amazon.com/Killer-Me-Margot-Harrison-ebook/dp/B01FZLMTT8/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_img_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=SGHKDS7271H00NN4RKZ0

I bought this one a while ago. I think it was the same time that I bought "Learning to swear in America". I believe both of them were on the Goodreads top YA books for July.

Here's the synopsis: Hasn't he lived long enough? Why not? I could take him like a thief in the night. This is how the Thief thinks. He serves death, the vacuum, the unknown. He's always waiting. Always there. Seventeen-year-old Nina Barrows knows all about the Thief. She's intimately familiar with his hunting methods: how he stalks and kills at random, how he disposes of his victims' bodies in an abandoned mine in the deepest, most desolate part of a desert. Now, for the first time, Nina has the chance to do something about the serial killer that no one else knows exists. With the help of her former best friend, Warren, she tracks the Thief two thousand miles, to his home turf—the deserts of New Mexico. But the man she meets there seems nothing like the brutal sociopath with whom she's had a disturbing connection her whole life. To anyone else, Dylan Shadwell is exactly what he appears to be: a young veteran committed to his girlfriend and her young daughter. As Nina spends more time with him, she begins to doubt the truth she once held as certain: Dylan Shadwell is the Thief. She even starts to wonder . . . what if there is no Thief? From debut author Margot Harrison comes a brilliantly twisted psychological thriller that asks which is more terrifying: the possibility that your nightmares are real . . . or the possibility that they begin and end with you?

The Kindle preview includes the first four chapters. I'm going to read you the first two, which ends up being about 19 pages.

I try to read the first couple chapters and put down my thoughts before reading the synopsis, so I can get an honest feeling for whether I would read on based on those pages. Here's what I got before I read the blurb on the Amazon page. Nina is a girl who dreams a serial killer's life. Plenty of opportunity for conflict and character developement. She's on a life and death mission to save a couple who lives a hundred plus miles away. She's smart enough to realize no one will believe her--the woman she called certainly didn't. The author's writing is crisp and clear, her characterization is solid, and her use of dialog is effective. I want to read on initially to see how she does with firing the .38 and secondly to see if she is able to get to upstate New Yord to help the older couple. I believe that these two conflicts are just an introduction to the story and my hopes are that this will ramp up into a solid thriller.

I had an interview with an author scheduled tonight, but she had to cancel for her son's back to school night. Unless I can reconnect with her in the next couple days, it will be another first chapter review next week. thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.