Kit has been trained from birth to be a serial killer. Her
mom drilled the rules into her head, teaching her the value
of moral nihilism along with various methods to kill people.
Kit has a reputation to uphold now. As the news media's
Perfect Killer, Kit has her choice of victims from the
letters she receives. What happens when one of the letters
hits too close to home and Kit has to decide if rules are
meant to be broken?
DEAR KILLER has an intriguing premise as we get a first
person perspective on the morality of serial killing. Kit is
initially a very cold character. We see her killing
individuals with no remorse whatsoever and then leaving the
letter behind that indicates who asked for the killing. The
sheer audacity is astounding and I love the premise,
particularly since the idea of a teenage serial killer isn't
your standard young adult fare.
However, the story seems to drag a bit as Kit waffles over
her lifelong philosophy of moral nihilism versus the
friendships she is suddenly gaining. While I normally skip
over the teenage angst that permeates so many young adult
books, it was this same angst that I missed while reading
DEAR KILLER. Only in the last pages did Kit's true dilemma
between her various personas become vividly alive to the
reader. Until then, I could guess at her emotions but they
were so flattened that it was hard to engage in her internal
debate.
DEAR KILLER is a story with a lot of potential. The concept
itself is quite unsettling but readers who want something a
bit different may find DEAR KILLER just what they are
looking for.
Full of "can't look away" moments, Dear Killer is a
psychological thriller perfect for fans of gritty realistic
fiction such as Dan Wells's I Am Not a Serial Killer and Jay
Asher's 13 Reasons Why, as well as television's Dexter.
Rule One: Nothing is right, nothing is wrong. Kit looks like
your average seventeen-year-old high school student, but she
has a secret: she's London's notorious "Perfect Killer." She
chooses who to murder based on letters left in a secret
mailbox, and she's good—no, perfect—at what she does.
Her moral nihilism—the fact that she doesn't believe in
right and wrong—makes being a serial killer a whole lot
easier . . . until she breaks her own rules by befriending
someone she's supposed to murder as well as the detective in
charge of the Perfect Killer case.
As New York Times bestselling author of the Gone series
Michael Grant says, Dear Killer is "shocking, mesmerizing,
and very smart."