An uproarious and relentless rollercoaster ride of laughter + much more!

How did the book make me feel/think?

I couldn't contain my laughter as I delved into the pages of “She's a Killer” by Kristen McDougall. Within the first 40 pages, I laughed so uproariously I had to put on noise-cancelling headphones to spare my eardrums. My raucous laughter caused such a disturbance I was promptly asked to leave the library where I had been residing.

As I continued reading, the story took an unexpected turn. The world was in dire straits, teetering on the brink of destruction. Everything was completely askew. New Zealand emerged as the last beacon of hope in this bleak scenario, the final paradise.

Our protagonist, a near-genius woman, trudged through life with a spectral imaginary friend by her side, simultaneously taunting her and offering guidance. The impending end of humanity rendered life utterly meaningless. To make matters worse, New Zealand was being invaded not by desperate refugees fleeing war-torn nations but by the ultra-wealthy individuals responsible for the destruction through the disease of greed and entitlement.

These “wealthugees” sought to purchase paradise, evading the inevitable downfall of humankind with their affluence. In the midst of this chaos, Alice, our near-genius protagonist, unexpectedly falls in love with a wealthugee who exhibits a conscience and a desire for a better world.

Their connection brings Erica, his daughter, into Alice’s orbit. Erica, surpassing Alice on the genius scale by two points, proves to be far more than she initially appears.

“She’s a Killer” takes readers on an uproarious and relentless rollercoaster ride of laughter and shines a blinding light on the true meaning of being a refugee. It challenges our preconceptions about those in need and those who have contributed to the mess in the first place.

With the final word devoured, I can guarantee readers will yearn for another page.

WRITTEN: 29 August 2023

I did not finish it so it's not really a review. Just some points why it didn't work for me. Not posting it anywhere else.

It started on a intriguing note. It was a little slow, yet I liked it. The conversation and all that. But then, it got really slow and I lost the connection and my patience.

I must admit that I am a very impatient reader so maybe it gets better later. If you're a patient reader, you may like it.

Alice is a 30 something almost genius with little ro no ambition or really desire to do much of anything. She's definitely someone I can relate to.

She quits her job. She meets a dude and has a little sex. He dumps his "daughter" off with her while he flees the country to save her mother. Her long time friendship with her only friend Amy is in turmoil. She has a toxic, toxic, toxic relationship with her awful, awful mother (who lives upstairs and she communicates with only through Morse code).

The book kinda dragged until about 55% through and then took a left hook and got rather interesting. Murder. Betrayal. An interesting story of a dystopian society facing trying to survive after a climate change is enveloping the world.

I enjoyed leaning more about Maori life, something I knew very little of and I feel is very unrepresented in entertainment. Very beautiful culture that should be more widely appreciated.

Overall, well written,though a good hundred pages too long. No real likeable characters, which makes this exactly the kind of book I'm naturally drawn to so hats off to that for sure!

Dark humor. An over abundance of ennui. Good stuff, but took a while to get to the meat of the story. Definitely will check out more down the road by this writer. All in all this is a solid 3.5 for me.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the Advanced Readers Copy of She's a Killer by Kristen McDougall!

If you prefer a likable main character, this book is not for you. Alice, an almost genius, does not give one singular f*ck about the state of the world, probably because she happens to live in a place that is still actually livable. She’s self centered. She’s unbothered. She’s apathetic. She barely tolerates her friend Amy, who seems to not care about her at all. She definitely met her match in Erika which was quite entertaining.

The first 55% of this book was slower than molasses for me but I stuck with it because I wanted to know which “she” was the killer and why. I enjoyed it a lot more once the murder happened which is a very weird thing to say. I just get a lot more entertainment out of books that jump right in to the action rather than dragging the plot along at a snail’s pace. Admittedly, I don’t have any sort of mental picture so that could be part of the reason why. All that to say, the back half of the book was much more gripping than the first. I probably would’ve DNFd if I wasn’t so curious about the killer and if this wasn’t an ARC.

I was also kind of bothered by the fact that this book was set in present day but at an accelerated climate change pace. It was hard to wrap my mind around how it got to that point so quickly. I was also confused as to why New Zealand’s coast wasn’t completely under water.

A wild ride set in New Zealand! Wealthugees are invading the country, eco warriors are trying to stop them. An unlikeable genius protagonist, a young girl full of secrets...entertaining satire.

I think this is the best book I’ve read this year. I like anything else I’ve read. Alice is a 30 something genius who shares a home with her mum in New Zealand. Climate change has reached crisis point and rich welthugees are buying their way into the country. As parts of the world are left under water or burning. This was such a terrifying subject to read about as it seems scarily probable in the future. Food prices are sky high and water is limited. Alice never wanted to push herself and could have been a psychologist. Instead she settles for an admin role on enrolments at university. She meets Pablo one day and an attraction is sparked. Pablo introduces his 15 year old daughter Erika also a genius who gives Alice a run for money. What happens next completely knocked me sideways I would never have seen it coming. I had to reread a couple of pages because I just couldn’t believe it. This book is so well written I got Sweetpea and how to kill your family vibes. It had me laughing yet terrified of what our future could hold. Absolutely brilliant

Initially, I was very confused and tempted not to finish the book. But the further I went, the more I read. The book's political theme wasn't very clear to me, but I loved the rest of it. In this book, I found basic thoughts about everyday life. I loved Alice, but especially her simple and honest answers. (Also Simp!) It was a very different book from what I usually read, but I liked it a lot. And of course, I'm not even talking about the plot twist, which was truly mind-blowing!

She's A killer is a skilfully written satirical thriller and a really fun read. Although it was a slow starter it is worth sticking with as I did find this to have amazing twists full of great characters.

Really funny, I likeable but likeable main character. I felt like there needed to be more conflict sooner and that the twist was a little far fetched… still 4/5.

I think you’d probably need a certain type of dark humour to enjoy this one!

Initially, I was very confused and tempted not to finish the book. But the further I went, the more I read. The book's political theme wasn't very clear to me, but I loved the rest of it. In this book, I found basic thoughts about everyday life. I loved Alice, but especially her simple and honest answers. (Also Simp!) It was a very different book from what I usually read, but I liked it a lot. And of course, I'm not even talking about the plot twist, which was truly mind-blowing!

In a world plagued with poverty, disaster and climate collapse, 37-year-old Alice is far too busy worrying about her own life. Despite her near-genius IQ, she's at her wits' end with a mundane university job, her relationship with her mother has deteriorated, and her imaginary friend, Simp--what a name--has resurfaced after a three-decade disappearance. Alice's social circle is limited: excluding a handful of colleagues and her childhood best friend Amy who's been raised to riches by her annoying architect husband Pete, she spends most of her time talking to Simp and kind of just being a whiny bitch.

Then she meets Pablo, a wealthugee--the new (and very clever) term for rich immigrants who have fled to New Zealand to escape the climate crisis. She's only looking for sexual distraction in him. Definitely nothing serious. (Famous last words.) But when Pablo's unusual teenage daughter Erika shows up unannounced, the novel branches off in a totally unexpected and very exciting direction. The opening is slower paced and seems to deal little in the external environment (with lots of stuff on Alice's personal life), but as the novel progresses the author masterfully weaves in some really critical dystopian themes. Be patient--Kirsten McDougall knows exactly what she's doing!

She's a Killer is the kind of novel which rewards you the more you read. Every chapter was a genuine surprise. I've read a lot of deeply depressing dystopias, so it was so refreshing to find a book which balanced urgency and humour in the way every good satire should.

Thank you Gallic Books for the copy!

I had a hard time reading this book. There's a real possibility our world will end up as messed up as the world in this book and it made me sad. Anyway, the main character in this book is a little hard for me to relate to. I don't think she's very likeable but she does grow on you a little throughout the book. Erika, the secondary character, makes her appear more likeable. The plot is confusing and meandering. All in all, it was a difficult book for me.

This was a DNF for me. I spent a long time forcing myself to read it but just wasn’t enjoying the story or the characters. I got halfway through and forgave myself for putting it aside. Maybe it’s just the wrong book at the wrong time, or I’m the wrong reader !

If you're searching for a quick, crisp read that's oozing with black humour, go no further! Kristen McDougall's She's A Killer will satisfy your craving and more. McDougall creates a dystopian side-splitter with all the trademarks of current American literature.

Shes A Killer follows Alice a slacker with an IQ of 159 her life takes a turn when she mets Pablo and Erica. Alice has an imaginary friend who I quiet liked but I didn't like Alice which was strange. I was really pushing myself through the book until about 60% when the twist happened. I had high hopes for this book but it just didn't hit the mark for me. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the digital copy for an honest review.

She’s a Killer is a dystopian satire, making sharp observations on society and humanities continual apathy and desensitisation towards our eventual self-inflicted doom. While I delighted in the astuteness of these societal narrations, the books' unrelenting nihilistic nature and pressing belief of the inherent selfishness of humanity, became rather draining after a while. The continual lack of hope or characters possessing any sort of empathy, the main character being entirely selfish and apathetic, with side characters who weren’t much better, made the book rather a slog at times, and I was forced to question why I continued reading when I couldn’t care less about the fate of any character.

Then about halfway through the novel, a plot shake up; which both felt way too late in the novel as well as being a rather unfeasible twist, added a strange element of surrealism to the formerly grounded novel. Not to mention a throwaway fantasy element popped up at one point and was completely unexplained, leaving me somewhat dumbfounded.

All in all this book is well written, a biting satire on society, however it gets weighed down by its constant pessimism and its veer into absurdity in the closing chapters. Readers who love a bit of dark humour will probably delight in this novel, but I personally found its continual insistence on the flaws of humanity to be rather sobering, leaving me unable to form an emotional attachment to the novel.

This is a Cli-Fi book, that takes place in the future. The main character Alice (IQ of 159) does a boring job and lives a pathetic like. Things start to change after Erica a wealthugee enters her life and starts making drastic changes.

The book is slow paced, it mostly talks about Alice's sad life. Though the book is named 'She's a Killer' the killings (and the identity of the killer) isn't revealed until later. There isn't any character development in the book. However, the ending has a good amount of suspense and is interesting. Overall, it is a good read but could have been better.

I don't love the standard practice of selling a book by saying it's "popular book meets other popular book!," but "She's A Killer" will inevitably be compared to "Birnam Wood" by Eleanor Catton. Think of it as a kind of "Birnam Wood" meets "Fight Club"-type situation.

Our primary protaganist is Alice, a certified near-genius who choked on her own potential years ago & settled for a boring desk job so that no one would ever expect too much from her. At the same time her imaginary friend from childhood makes an unwelcome reappearance, she is tasked with looking after Erika, the 15-year-old daughter of a wealthy climate refugee, who seems more than capable of looking after herself.

Which is a good thing, as Alice is in no fit state to be anyone's caretaker. She only communicates with her mother, who lives upstairs, via Morse code. She's having a rather listless & one-sided affair with her married boss. & there's distance building in her relationship with her only friend, Amy. They had been teenage fuck-ups together once upon a time, but now Amy is married to a successful, wealthy architect, homeschooling their three precocious children, & planning a precipitous move to the country, where she hopes to ride out the climate apocalypse safely with her family.

Like "Birnam Wood," this is a dystopian cli-fi thriller set in New Zealand. I think it's safe to say that New Zealanders are experiencing some country-wide anxiety about the fact that their nation is being perceived as the bolthole of the world by the same extractionist arch-capitalist billionaires that have made all their money from ensuring the planet uninhabitable for humankind--so much so that a genre seems to be emerging. But it's not a genre I'm tired of yet, & "She's A Killer" has its own take on the topic, which moves the story in a different direction. Alice, like The Narrator of "Fight Club," is plagued by her own demons & makes for a somewhat unreliable narrator, failing to see obvious clues falling into place right in front of her, despite her great intelligence, & this haplessness, combined with her complete lack of fucks to give, propels the plot forward.

This book is getting a lot of great pre-publication press, but for my money, a lot of the plot hinges on a lot of people being willfully oblivious, & the ending in particular reminded me of the climaxes to the terrible climate thrillers I wrote myself in elementary school in the 80s, where someone was always barely surviving an acid rain tornado or something. (That's not the ending here; just offering some context.) However, if "Birnam Wood" meets "Fight Club" sounds good to you, you will LOVE this book. & bonus points: it has a sense of humor as well. "Darkly satirical" will come up a lot in review copy.

If you're looking for a fun, sharp read dripping with black humor, don't look any further! She's A Killer by Kristen McDougall will scratch that itch and more. With all the hallmarks of contemporary American writing, McDougall crafts a dystopian side-splitter reminiscent of Pynchon or DFW while being less obtuse and more readable.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and to NetGalley for the digital advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.