Kill All Your Darlings by David Bell reminded me of another recent book about a professor publishing a book written by a student. But there are some differences.

"Connor Nye is an average professor teaching creative writing to young, impressionable college students. He has recently published a best-selling thriller. The only problem is - he didn't write it. The student who did write it disappeared so Connor took it and claimed it as his own. Now she's back and wants the money from the book. Or she will expose Connor as a fraud.
And the police want to talk to him because there are details of a murder in the book that are strangely similar to a real murder - and the police want to know how Connor could possibly know these details unless he was there..."

This is my first book from Bell. He has an easy-to-read writing style. He keeps the tension pretty high in the story. Similar to so many thrillers today there are dual timelines. You have a decent idea about where the book is going. There are several clues that may help you guess who the killer was and is (they stay busy)

I like the resolution. It's not a happy ever after but it works.

Good summer beach thriller from Bell.

After the death of his wife and son, College professor, Connor Nye publishes hips first book. Tenure was on the line, and he needed to do or die as they say. So, he published a book about the murder of a young woman. His book is a success but there is a catch - he did not write the book. His missing student did. Gone and presumed dead, Conner is shocked when she shows up on hips doorstep wanting the money, he earned off the sale of the book she wrote.

Just when you think that things cannot get worse, they do! His/her book implicates him in an unsolved murder of a young woman two years earlier. Details not made known to the public are in the book. The police want to know how Connor knew these details. Connor is left with a dilemma - does he say he did not write the book and lose everything, or does he hope they find the real killer even if it means risking everything. He is in a no-win situation. What would you do?

David Bell has crafted an intelligent and tense whodunit which had me on the edge of my seat, swiping the pages on my kindle and coming up with suspects in my head. IP enjoyed how he showed how one bad =- unbelievably bad decision can have damaging consequences on one’s life. Throughout the book, I kept thinking Connor has really stepped in it this time! His desperation to clear his name, causes him to make several poor judgement calls which had me shaking my head.

Told in dual timelines and POV’s, this book does not disappoint! I enjoyed how both storylines merged and provided more information about what is happening in the current storyline without giving away the farm! As all eyes are on Connor, I kept thinking what is going to happen next!

If you have not read a David Bell novel before, you need to get reading! Seriously, his books are beautifully written, gripping, and intelligent page turners.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.


#KillAllYourDarlings #NetGalley

In writing, you must kill all your darlings.

This was a clever title, with a gorgeous cover, and my first read from this author. I was really looking forward to it!

But, I struggled a bit to get into it…I really didn’t connect with any of the characters or feel anything for them, and I think I should’ve. Especially considering the main character, Connor Nye, was a widower who lost not only his wife, but also his teenage son. His pain should be something I feel, but I didn’t. It was kind of just explained one-dimensionally.

The chapters had a tendency to cut off in odd spots. They often ended in the middle of a scene and then the next chapter picks right back up at the same spot. It would’ve flowed better to just continue the chapter through the entire scene.

It was also pretty dialogue-heavy, and some of the dialogue even felt unnatural at times (longer monologue-type passages, etc). There was a lot of telling as opposed to showing, which made the book feel long…it probably didn’t need to be 400+ pages.

I really wanted to love it, but unfortunately, it fell short for me. 😢

Thank you to @NetGalley and @Berkleypub for the eARC.

Wow, what a phenomenal thriller Kill All Your Darlings was!

I loved that this story was told through different POVs, and that we jumped around in the timeline a bit. It really made this story come to life for me as the details were revealed! The plot for this one completely took me by surprise! I loved the twists and turns that the story took, and I loved the ending! This was my first book by David Bell, and now I’m on the hunt for my next read by him!

I would recommend this story for readers that enjoy a mystery with dark character secrets and lots of surprises!

Ahh I've missed David Bell Books! Loved this book, and I love that he wrote some strong females, and also wrote about men who feel they are owed things from women. I appreciated that this book felt like it was pulled from the headlines. I've been a Bell fan for years, before Bookstagram was even a thing. I will forever be a fan!

Kill All Your Darlings is the newest book by @davidbellnovels and the first of his I’ve read. After finishing this one, I’ll definitely be reading his others!

KAYD is a twisty thriller about a professor who steals his student’s manuscript after she goes missing. Connor Nye is desperate to keep his job after his wife and young son tragically pass away and becoming published is a way to secure tenure. He thinks that after Madeline disappears, that he would be fine. Except he was unaware that her story very closely resembles a real life murder with details never released to the public. He becomes implicated when Madeline returns and stirs up trouble.

This book was awesome! I love the different POVs and the dual timelines. The pacing on this book was really quick and I kept wanting to know what happened next. I was definitely surprised by the ending! I also like that the author included the William Faulkner quote that the title is from.

Kill All Your Darlings is the newest book by @davidbellnovels and the first of his I’ve read. After finishing this one, I’ll definitely be reading his others!

KAYD is a twisty thriller about a professor who steals his student’s manuscript after she goes missing. Connor Nye is desperate to keep his job after his wife and young son tragically pass away and becoming published is a way to secure tenure. He thinks that after Madeline disappears, that he would be fine. Except he was unaware that her story very closely resembles a real life murder with details never released to the public. He becomes implicated when Madeline returns and stirs up trouble.

This book was awesome! I love the different POVs and the dual timelines. The pacing on this book was really quick and I kept wanting to know what happened next. I was definitely surprised by the ending! I also like that the author included the William Faulkner quote that the title is from.

I enjoyed Kill All Your Darlings! This was my first David Bell book and I enjoyed his writing style.

When a student disappears and is presumed dead her college writing professsor passes off the novel she was writing as his own. Two years later, the week the book is published, she shows up on his doorstep and threatens to expose his lie. When the local detective reads the book and notices the similararies to an unsolved murder case 2.5 years ago Connor is now questioned for the murder...

This is a pretty quick read with short chapters and multiple narrators/timelines. I like the academia setting and the idea of a plagerized book.

Thank you to NetGalley, David Bell and Berkley Publishing for the free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoy reading novels about authors and their books so I was thrilled to be granted early access to this one! It really didn't disappoint! I loved trying to figure out who was the killer in this one and I really couldn't decide if both crimes were committed by the same person. This one is dark and mysterious and it felt like it took no time at all and I was at the end, piecing it all together. It's definitely a slower paced thriller than I am used to, but there is more than enough to keep you interested until the ending!

Whoa! Just whoa... I had no idea what to expect from this book, but it wasn't that... If you're looking for a thriller that will keep you guessing, look no further than this one right here. It's a wild ride!

English professor, Connor Nye, is a lonely guy. His wife and son passed away a couple of years ago, he's barely hanging onto his job, and he hangs out at a bar with his students just so he's not alone. Then one of his students goes missing and he still has her thesis. Her thesis is a brilliant thriller novel and when he decides to publish it in his own name to get tenure, he never expected she would suddenly reappear in his life. But that's exactly what happens... Madeline shows up and shortly after, so does a detective. She lets him know that "his book" gives specific details about a murder that happened in his little town and now he's a suspect. Watching this story unravel, thread by thread, was awesome!

I've been in the mood for slow burn thrillers lately. While I love action-packed, fast-paced tales, sometimes you just need a story to sink in, marinate and let questions like, "but how would ..." or "why did ..." pop into your head. In KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS, author David Bell gives a read-and-relax plot that leaves us a waiting in anticipation for the whodunit.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the Advanced Reader Copy to review. KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS will be published on Tuesday, July 6!

After years of struggling to write following the deaths of his wife and son, English professor Connor Nye publishes his first novel, a thriller about the murder of a young woman.

There's just one problem: Connor didn't write the book. His missing student did. And then she appears on his doorstep, alive and well, threatening to expose him.

Connor's problems escalate when the police insist details in the novel implicate him in an unsolved murder from two years ago. When another murder occurs, Connor must clear his name by unraveling the horrifying secrets buried in his student's manuscript.

KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS is the first in my blog series "Posers and Imposters." Our good-guy antagonist Connor is trying to navigate his grief while not losing his beloved job as a college professor/author, yet is carrying the lie that he is the author of a successful novel.

It was William Faulkner who said, "In writing, you must kill all your darlings." What he meant was writers must get rid of any characters that the author may love, but do nothing to move the story along. And that is certainly what David accomplished in this novel. Each character is a thread to another character that lead to questions and answers of this book-within-a-book mystery.

Readers get a glimpse into the pressures of gaining and keeping university tenure and the cold, hard truth that a lot of English professors are ... not valued because they are unpublished.

Open KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS on a night when you are ready to reminisce about college days and dream of being published. Oh, wait, that was for me to do. You just enjoy this tale of what a burden being an imposter can bring.

I rate KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS four out of five stars.

Definitely a new style for David Bell, but I think it worked well!

I really liked the way this book got right too it on the first page and the way it was structured kept me really interested. I do wish that the different times would have been numerical titled, for explained "November 2010" or whatever year, instead of "Winter, Two Years Ago" because sometimes the time line was a little confusing.

I also really liked that many of the characters had some small involvement, and a lot of them could have done it. You honestly didn't know until almost 90% of the way through the book. Part of it between 80 & 90% felt like it went back and forth too rapidly--- Nye did it! Lance did it! Madeline did it! So for a short bit there it seemed a little all over the place. Still, it wrapped it up nicely and I really enjoyed it. I especially liked that no one got off without any consequences, everyone got at least some of what they deserved for their part in Madeline's disappearance.

Overall I just really liked it! Another solid story from David Bell! I really hope next year book signings go back to in-person, I really miss seeing David Bell and the authors he's previously toured with in NYC!

I couldn't have guessed this ending if I wanted to. The plot was amazing and I was hooked from the beginning. I couldn't help but feel so many emotions for the main character. The author does an excellent job making a connection. Absolutely loved this book.

Kill All Your Darlings is an enjoyable, fast-paced mystery that grabbed me from the start and held my interest throughout. A cast of highly unreliable characters surround Connor Nye and he is unsure who he can trust as he tries to figure out what's truly going on. Connor makes bad decision after bad decision but he’s a man who has lost a lot and you’ll find yourself pulling for him. (OK, you may get a little exasperated as he's supposed to be a smart man.) The story is effectively told from multiple perspectives in the present and the past. Seasoned thriller readers will probably figure it all out, but the book is a worthwhile and fun read. (Loved that Connor’s elderly dog is named Grendel.)

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the opportunity to read Kill All Your Darlings in advance of its July 6, 2021 publication. This is the first novel I have read by David Bell and I’ll be watching for what he writes next.

Professor Connor Nye steals a manuscript a student was working on when that student disappears. Then the book gets published and the girl reappears to claim it. When he refuses because he could lose his job and tenure, the police are on him... Not for stealing the story but because OF the story and the murder inside that's very like a murder of a woman 2 years ago.

I felt a bit bad for Connor because of the loss of his family and his lost way, but I don't feel bad for what he goes through all because he won't admit to stealing the story. A lot could have been avoided (of course then no real book here either). This turns out to be nothing more than a "boys club" of jealousy, betrayed, murder and cover up. I didn't feel bad for how it all turned out.

Kill All Your Darlings is a well-paced thriller with a gentle indictment of the "good ol' boys club" within institutions, in this case an English department at a Kentucky college.
I took it on a fishing trip and the fish weren't biting so I was very happy for some extra reading time. I would have loved a bigger role for Rebecca and, personally, I felt it lost a little steam at the end.

Kill All Your Darlings is a crime thriller about a depressed English professor who publishes a novel using his missing-student's thesis. As the novel publishes, he's implicated in the murder of a local woman which is eerily similar to the plot of the novel. So does he admit to plagiarism ad derail is career or does he go down for a murder that he didn't commit? At least he thinks he didn't have anything to do with it...

I really enjoyed the plot of the book and it definitely kept me engaged. I was a little underwhelmed at the end of the book, but I think that may have just been more on me. This is more of a crime thriller than a thriller/thriller.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing and Netgalley for the electronic advanced copy.

Professor of English Conner Nye has been advising his student Madeline on her thesis project, which she hopes will be a novel. When Madeline suddenly goes missing, Conner decides to publish the book under his name.

Little did he know that the details of the murder in the book are intimately close to an unsolved murder case. Then Madeline reappears at Conner’s house, and the plot thickens. She’s not happy he published her book, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘮.

A sharp detective asks Conner to sign his book for her and asks how he could know these details, and now his life is spinning out of control.

Although the ending was a tad foreseeable, I felt it didn’t detract from the story as we toggled between before and after Madeline’s disappearance.

David Bell has penned a compelling thriller that checked off many boxes for me: ✓ Set in academia ✓ addressed sexual harassment ✓ book within a book ✓ short-tense chapters ✓ multiple timelines.

Thank you to @suzyapprovedbooktours and @DavidBellNovels for an invitation to this tour and a digital copy.

David Bell wrote a very gripping novel full of twists and also full of people making one bad decision after another. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Connor’s one of the beloved professor in the writing academia, but because he’s in constant grief from losing his wife and teenage son a few years back, he is not as focused on his job as before. He is also unable to write a story. When his student Madeline went missing one day after turning in her thesis, he felt gutted. Memories of his own loss resurfaced again. Added to this, he was pressured to have his own work published, lest he lose his tenure in the university. Guess whose work he claimed as his own? Yep, Madeline’s! There’s just one problem: on the book’s launching day, Madeline came back after 2 years of disappearance. She wants the money from the book sale or else she’ll expose Connor’s plagiarism. But the story doesn’t just revolve around this. The contents of the book were eerily similar to how another woman in their village was killed 2 years ago! So now, the police suspects Connor as being the killer. But will Connor admit to plagiarizing the work of his student to save his ass from jail? This will be a career suicide, but he dug his own grave when he made the choice to claim Madeline’s story as his own. And what about Madeline? Was she the killer? How did she know about the details of the murder when the police did not even disclose those specific info on the news? As always, I enjoyed the multiple POVs and dual timelines. This was another thriller that kept me up all night! My only issue is that towards the end of the book, some scenes were repetitive and dragged a bit, and the finale was underwhelming. Having said that, this was still a nice suspense novel for me. Just know the trigger warnings before you read this: sexual harassment, murder, violence, suicide, and abuse of authority. David Bell is a new-to-me author but I am already looking forward to reading his other novels. Final rating: 4/5

This is my first book by David Bell. And I can say overall, I enjoyed this book. It pulled me in immediately. It kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering what in the world was going on! It was a quick read. I was part of a buddy read for this book and had to force myself to stop at the appointed chapters!
It seemed like this book was just full of bad decisions! On everyone’s part! I wanted to shake almost everyone and ask why they were doing what they were! Ugh! No one seemed to think before acting. The plot twist did have a few surprises but the general plot twist I saw coming.
I feel like everything wrapped up neatly at the end. Most of the questions I had were answered, with the exception of any follow up on the person who was revealed to be involved and where Madeline had been for so long.