How To Kill Men and Get Away With It by Katy Brent

*minor spoilers ahead*

How To Kill Men and Get Away With It by Katy Brent is a dark-humoured psychological thriller about friendship, love and murder. Influencer Kitty Collins is not shy to take justice into her own hands, and becomes a pro at murdering men; men who deserve their fate. Kitty is a popular vegan and feminist, sharing a large portion of her life online, but is eager to keep her violent hobby a secret.

The writing of this book is very modern with lots of social media and popular culture references. The target audience is more of a young adult book, as a lot of the humour and tones would not be understood by someone who is not aware of the social media world. It also reminded me of Gossip Girl in the sense that every character is rich and some sort of influencer and always has drama associated with them. However, this book does contrast this tone with the dark side of violence, murder, and revenge.

Kitty very much reminds me of Jo Goldberg from the Netflix show You, which is ironic as Joe’s character is mentioned as a joke in the book. Kitty and Joe both get in the habit of murdering people for reasons that are good enough for them. What also reminded me of their similarity, is how often they literally get away with murder. Whilst it is clear these stories and adventures are fiction, sometimes from an outside perspective is it difficult to ignore how fabricated these events are. The number of times the police or their friends should have caught them out was frustrating at times. It did help that Kitty’s victims were usually those who were accused of sexual assault and were not properly punished, making her motive more understandable.

I want to live in a world where I don’t have to keep my keys between my fingers in case I’m attacked walking home.

How To Kill Men and Get Away With It

A highlight of this book for me was Charlie’s character as he was introduced at a time when the other sub-characters were becoming too similar and non-important. Charlie’s character arc was not 100% consistent (e.g., when we found out that Charlie knew about the allegations against James), but this wasn’t detrimental to his character.

There are some jaw-dropping moments in this book, especially with the graphic scenes when Kitty is on her murdering spree. Essentially the book is made up of Kitty going on a feminist rampage and using her violent impulses for good (most of the time). How To Kill Men and Get Away With It got more addictive to read especially in the second half, with the short chapters contributing to the fast pace of the book. This worked well as I was always anxious to read of Kitty’s next move.

Unfortunately, I did find the main plot twist to be predictable but there were a few minor surprises entangled with this which was a good touch. Whilst this is a thriller, it is not one of my favourites due to the lack of plot complexity, but I did enjoy this book and was quick to get through.

3/5 stars