THE DARKLY TWISTED DEBUT THRILLER OF THE YEAR

How to Kill Your Family meets The Power in this entertaining and thought-provoking read, that asks:

If you had the power between life and death, what would you do?

Thea has a secret. She can tell how long someone has left to live just by touching them. Not only that, but she can transfer life from one person to another – something she finds out the hard way when her best friend Ruth suffers a fatal head injury on a night out.

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Desperate to save her, Thea touches the arm of the man responsible when he comes to check if Ruth is all right. As Ruth comes to, the man quietly slumps to the ground, dead. Thea realises that she has a godlike power: but despite deciding to use her ability for good, she can’t help but sometimes use it for her own benefit.

Boss annoying her at work? She can take some life from them and give it as a tip to her masseuse for a great job.

Creating an ‘Ethical Guide to Murder’ helps Thea to focus her new-found skills.

But as she embarks on her mission to punish the wicked and give the deserving more time, she finds that it isn’t as simple as she first thought. How can she really know who deserves to die, and can she figure out her own rules before Ruth’ borrowed time runs out?

My Review

It’s an interesting concept! “Punish the wicked and give the deserving more time. It’s that simple. Right?” Only it’s not. Giving the deserving more time is easy, especially if it’s a child, but who do you take it from? Take a few months or weeks here and there? Or ‘kill’ people you believe should be eliminated? And who decides who is wicked? Well, Thea and Sam think they have it right, though I think Thea is being coerced by Sam who promises to help her find the drunk driver who killed her parents and left her by the side of the road. He has his own agenda.

Let’s just backtrack for a second. Thea has a superpower of sorts. She can see how long people have left to live just by touching them, so when best friend Ruth hits her head in a nightclub and is about to die, Thea takes the life from the nearest stranger and gives it to Ruth. Except he didn’t deserve to die. It was a terrible mistake.

Moving on, the problem is that Thea sometimes chooses people that have hurt others, but doesn’t take into consideration that they didn’t ask for her help. And it frequently backfires. “I hate my parents or partner” doesn’t mean you want them removed from the face of the earth.

Of course Thea can ‘get away with murder’, so to speak, as who would believe that she can suck the life out of people with her power. Except Police Officer Stewart is suspicious, but he can’t work out what’s going on.

An Ethical Guide to Murder is really a morality tale, with a lot of dark humour thrown in. Entertaining and thought provoking, it will keep you up at night wondering whether Thea’s actions can ever be justified.

I can’t remember the last time I cried this much at the end of a book. Not just a sniffle, but real blobby tears, running down my face. It’s brilliant.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Jenny Morris lives in Crowborough, the home of Winnie the Pooh and an outrageous number of charity shops. She has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology and works as a behavioural scientist. When not reading or writing, she enjoys galloping around the Ashdown Forest on a horse, foraging for mushrooms and getting way too intense about board games at the pub.