Michelle Dsouza
I sat on this book for months and I have no defence. Murder mystery, thriller, romance, humour, banter with teeth. I read it in four days and immediately developed a grudge against every bookshop in Bahrain for not stocking the sequel.
Weaver pulls off something strange here: she writes serial killers you end up cheering for. On a technical level, Harper and Nolan are not the strongest leads I have read this year. The depth is not fully there, and I noticed. What saves them is chemistry. The slow build between them earns every page it takes, and as unhinged as it feels to admit, I wanted these two murderers to get their happy ending. Rarely have two people been so precisely made for each other.
The comedy lands because everything pulls in the same direction: the narrative voice, the timing, the absurdity of Cape Carnage itself. Dual POV, and both voices hold up. The town does serious heavy lifting too. It leans all the way into its reputation for carnage, and its residents behave like any coastal community where privacy goes to die. The story is fuller for it.
Yes, the twists are visible from a distance. Weaver is not hiding them. The satisfaction lives in the delivery rather than the surprise, and that is a confident choice, not a failure.
The most grounded thread belongs to Arthur, Harper's ageing mentor, who is living with dementia. Weaver drew this from her own grandparents' experiences, works in neuroscience clinical research, and donates part of the trilogy's royalties to Alzheimer's charities. You feel it. That storyline holds a tenderness the rest of the book, deliberately, never reaches for.
My complaints are minor. The spice sometimes tips into dialogue cheesy enough to earn a full eye roll, and I am normally put off by this much open-door content, but here each scene feeds the next and the intent behind it is clear. The murder scenes themselves run a bit flat, which lovingly suggests Weaver lacks hands-on experience. And Harper's day job as a gardener solves a logistics problem this genre usually ignores. Inspired.
I will remember this one. Not because it sits heavy on the heart, but because it refuses to mistake gloom for atmosphere in a genre that so often does. I am borderline murderous for book 2.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.
I sat on this book for months and I have no defence. Murder mystery, thriller, romance, humour, banter with teeth. I read it in four days and immediately developed a grudge against every bookshop in Bahrain for not stocking the sequel.
Weaver pulls off something strange here: she writes serial killers you end up cheering for. On a technical level, Harper and Nolan are not the strongest leads I have read this year. The depth is not fully there, and I noticed. What saves them is chemistry. The slow build between them earns every page it takes, and as unhinged as it feels to admit, I wanted these two murderers to get their happy ending. Rarely have two people been so precisely made for each other.
The comedy lands because everything pulls in the same direction: the narrative voice, the timing, the absurdity of Cape Carnage itself. Dual POV, and both voices hold up. The town does serious heavy lifting too. It leans all the way into its reputation for carnage, and its residents behave like any coastal community where privacy goes to die. The story is fuller for it.
Yes, the twists are visible from a distance. Weaver is not hiding them. The satisfaction lives in the delivery rather than the surprise, and that is a confident choice, not a failure.
The most grounded thread belongs to Arthur, Harper's ageing mentor, who is living with dementia. Weaver drew this from her own grandparents' experiences, works in neuroscience clinical research, and donates part of the trilogy's royalties to Alzheimer's charities. You feel it. That storyline holds a tenderness the rest of the book, deliberately, never reaches for.
My complaints are minor. The spice sometimes tips into dialogue cheesy enough to earn a full eye roll, and I am normally put off by this much open-door content, but here each scene feeds the next and the intent behind it is clear. The murder scenes themselves run a bit flat, which lovingly suggests Weaver lacks hands-on experience. And Harper's day job as a gardener solves a logistics problem this genre usually ignores. Inspired.
I will remember this one. Not because it sits heavy on the heart, but because it refuses to mistake gloom for atmosphere in a genre that so often does. I am borderline murderous for book 2.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.