Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Contemporary, Fiction
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?
The main character is a girl named Nina. Nina has dreams where she sees from the point of view of a serial killer who murders people randomly and without a trace. This of course really affects her and leaves her scarred to where she even avoids sleeping at night. It was great getting to hear killer's thoughts. When you see how he is killing innocent people, the killer looks like an absolute monster, but hearing his thoughts is confusing in that it does not fully sound like those of a heartless murderer. This book is unique in that it allows you to get to know the serial killer from his inner thoughts and feelings to his fears and wishes to his past. These aspects humanized the killer and made me feel as though I could connect and empathize with him (which that in itself was kind of scary). There were parts where I even felt sorry for him, but then I would remember the last scenes where he strangled a girl to death and try to force those feelings out of my mind.
Margot Harrison had the perfect writing style for this book. It was very descriptive. I could visualize every landscape, setting and unfortunately every murder as well. Thank you to Harrison for scarring me for life...Just kidding, your writing talent is amazing! I felt all the fear and suspense. On top of all this, the writing not only is descriptive and good at setting the tone of the book, it was also surprisingly reflective and there were some quotes that really stood out to me
Overall, this book was a great scary psychological thriller and now I walk around wondering if every man around me is a serial killer. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes mysteries, thrillers, and darker fiction. I don't know if this book can be described a pure horror (mostly because I generally don't dive much into this genre), but I definitely would avoid reading this book at night.
I seriously almost did not finish this book, but not because I disliked it or thought it was bad. On the contrary, it was performing its purpose better than I expected, and I was unsure if I could handle more. Me being me, I continued because I was hooked and dying to know more This book was scary, mysterious, and thrilling all at the same time. I honestly did not expect it to put me on a psychological roller coaster, but I was strapped in and I stayed put for the entirety of this book.
The main character is a girl named Nina. Nina has dreams where she sees from the point of view of a serial killer who murders people randomly and without a trace. This of course really affects her and leaves her scarred to where she even avoids sleeping at night. It was great getting to hear killer's thoughts. When you see how he is killing innocent people, the killer looks like an absolute monster, but hearing his thoughts is confusing in that it does not fully sound like those of a heartless murderer. This book is unique in that it allows you to get to know the serial killer from his inner thoughts and feelings to his fears and wishes to his past. These aspects humanized the killer and made me feel as though I could connect and empathize with him (which that in itself was kind of scary). There were parts where I even felt sorry for him, but then I would remember the last scenes where he strangled a girl to death and try to force those feelings out of my mind.
Margot Harrison had the perfect writing style for this book. It was very descriptive. I could visualize every landscape, setting and unfortunately every murder as well. Thank you to Harrison for scarring me for life...Just kidding, your writing talent is amazing! I felt all the fear and suspense. On top of all this, the writing not only is descriptive and good at setting the tone of the book, it was also surprisingly reflective and there were some quotes that really stood out to me
Favorite Quotes
"A weapon, as far as the Theif is concerned, is something to take away from your victim and use against them. Weapons make people overconfident unless they're trained cops or soldiers, which his victims never are. Confidence makes people stupid"
She'll kick, but not hard enough. She'll decide it's better to give him what he wants and hope things don't end badly."
"I didn't want to be a thing, reduced to part of my anatomy."
Doves represent peace. Doves hurt no one. Yet I cuddle my little dove killer, I stroke his cheeks, I feed him treats, I let him sleep on my bed.
"Why does she want to live so much, knowing she's still going to die one day? He doesn't understand it. Someone could come up and put a gun to his temple right this second, and he wouldn't care."
"Books taught me the Theif was no anomaly. All through human history, people had been robbing and raping and killing and doing unspeakable things to their enemies. Suddenly, it seemed like a miracle nothing bad had ever happened to me. The only way to be safe from bad people, really safe, was to strike first."
"Insecure people do what you say when you point a gun at them"
My Rating:
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I was raised in the wilds of New York by lovely, nonviolent parents who somehow never managed to prevent me from staying up late to read scary books. I now work at an alt-weekly newspaper in Vermont, where my favorite part of the job is, of course, reviewing scary books and movies. The Killer in Me is my first novel.
