I’m not 100% sure what I just read, honestly. We start off with an older Carol, who starts off telling us that she killed Frankie and lost their daughter too soon. We also know that Frankie wasn’t such a good guy since she believes he went straight to hell when he died. And we know that everyone is about to find out.
The first half of the book goes through Carol’s life as a 16-year-old with a promising academic career in college when she meets a 20-year-old Frankie. The second half of the book is in more present times where we learn about the rest of the story.
Killing the Girls is an interesting book, for sure. This is a story about justice, revenge, an eye-for-an-eye. It’s a story about a woman who lets men control her, until she can’t take it any longer. And it’s about how once you start living this way, your mistakes are often repeated.
As a reader, though, even at the end of the book, we’re still not sure if Carol is a reliable narrator. She’s been in and out of psychiatric hospitals, she tells us she doesn’t remember — or want to remember — so much of what happened in her life, and it’s obvious that she’s going downhill very quickly by the end of the book.
And it’s not until the end of the book that we start hearing specifically about “the girl,” and it’s really too much. While we can’t trust the narrator, we should trust the reader to pick up on who the girl is without having it repeated over and over at the end of the book.
Overall, though, this descent into madness — or is it ultimately a rise to sanity? — is a good overall read.
Disclaimer: I received a free e-galley of this book from BookSirens in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.