I hadn't read anything by this author, but was still excited to receive an ARC of Kill for Me, Kill for You! This book was a wild ride that I absolutely could not put down and passed along to a friend immediately after finishing. It was suspenseful and extremely fast paced, with a ton of twists I didn't see coming. I don't usually love multiple POVs but it really worked in this one. I'm looking forward to diving into this author's back catalog and also seeing what he does next! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the early copy!

This book was way too long and really exhausting. I almost dnf'd at 20%, because, frankly, I was just bored with the painfully slow build. I read some reviews, mostly good ones, and I decided to stick it out, but it really never got any better.
Spoilers ahead! Turn back now.
The writing was super repetitive. Entire pages were dedicated to explanations of grief and desire for suffering that had already been explored, at length. I also don't feel the perspective of Farrow added anything to the story.
Yes, they had been through terrible stuff. No, they didn't deal with it properly. Yes, the justice system can sometimes be a dead end and that really sucks. But the book was easily 150 pages longer than it needed to be to accomplish what it did.
The revenge murder swap thing seemed like a highly terrible idea, but you're desperate, okay. When I almost dnf'd that part was spoiled for me because I read some reviews that gave away the con, but the way Wendy just was like yeah he's dead you have to do it for me now and pressured her so much... that made it obvious on it's own.
This book had a few fast paced thrilling moments, and there were a couple of clever twists but the ending, seriously, WTF. It took me longer than it should have to realize Ruth was Wendy/Naomi/etc., as I did not notice the time gap like I probably should have. I also did not see Billy coming. But the fact that Billy saves the day for Amanda/saving the world from Ruth (who arguably would not have become what she was if not for him in the first place) but is still out there being a serial killer on his own? Nope. This entire book was seriously convoluted and messed up and I did not enjoy.
I do appreciate the ARC, and thank the publishers, author, and NetGalley.

I am a huge fan of Steve Cavanagh! Being given the opportunity to read this new novel of his was exciting, and did not disappoint.

Amanda is struggling to exist in a world without her husband and daughter, while the man possibly responsible for her daughter's death is free . Court ordered to attend a grief group, Amanda meets Wendy, who shares a similar situation of her daughter's murderer roaming free. Together, they form a bond and consider what it would be like to take justice into their own hands.

Meanwhile, Ruth is brutally attacked in her home and is trying to recover from the trauma with the support of her husband Scott. These lives are all damaged by horrific violence, and sometimes the justice system doesn't offer the type of justice to help heal wounds, but does that mean that justice can be the job of those impacted? And to what lengths are people willing to go to seek justice?

It is difficult to summarize this plot because there are so many moving pieces! I think this is why I loved it so much, there was definitely an element of trying to piece how these storylines would come together. Also, the switching storylines left me wanting more with each chapter!

This is a must read for thriller lovers! Definitely adding this to my favorites pile!

I'm apparently in the minority, but this one didn't work for me. It took way too long for things to get going, and I struggled to get engaged. There were some interesting twists, but many were just implausible. The writing style was all over the place and felt very clunky in parts. There's nothing about this book that will stick with me now that the final page has been turned.

I received a paperback copy of this book from Atria.

Amanda meets Wendy at group therapy. Amanda's 6-year-old daughter was abducted and found murdered; however, the man the police think is behind it still walks free. Amanda becomes obsessed with the man she believes has ruined her life. When Amanda and Wendy start talking, they plan to follow the movie "Strangers on a Train."

Ruth is the victim of a home invasion, and she moves into a hotel with her husband Scott and can't leave the hotel, let alone her hotel room for weeks.

I had NO idea how Amanda and Ruth's story intersect. I felt sorry for Amanda and the pain of losing her young daughter and weeks later, her husband.

I can understand why Amanda spends all her time watching the man who robbed her of everything.

I also felt bad for Ruth, and although I thankfully haven't experienced a home invasion, I understood her fear.

This book has alternating chapters mainly between Ruth and Amanda, with Farrow and Scott scattered in. This is my favorite book of the year!

Thank you, @netgalley, @sscav, and @atria

Everyone reacts to trauma in a different manner. Some cries and hides from people. Some becomes indifferent and pretend like nothing happened. Some actually looks for ways to get over it in healthy ways. Ruth started with hiding from people but then her trauma turned into a disturbing obsession.

Amanda lost a child first then her husband because he couldn’t accept that what happened to their daughter wasn’t his fault. The way she handled her trauma got her in trouble with law. A deceptive took pity because he understood why she was the way she was and he also knew that the man Amanda hyper focused on was his guy. But he needed to stop Amanda from getting in trouble. He was ready to deliver her to her support group. Amanda met Wendy there and what happened after was hard to imagine

I loved how the back and forth between two main character and another narrator kept me on my toes. While I managed to follow the clues and make certain connections, the twist was slap in the face. Humankind can be incredibly creative especially when they are pain.

This is what every thriller should be. I loved it.

All you need to go know going into it is that it's a twist on Strangers on the Train. Otherwise, I would go in blind.

It's twisty, got multiple POVs, and will have you flipping pages so fast to see what happens. Many reviews have also said this - but I predicted some of the twists but that didn't affect their shock factor. Perfect book to get me out of a slump.

Interested read… from the beginning to end of the text. Since I love a good thriller, this book grabs the readers interest right away and commences to take you on a bit of a roller coaster of emotions, and constant back tracking of…. When did that happen.

This was my first book my Steve Cavanagh and it will not be my last. This is possibly my favorite thriller ever. Hands down in the top ten. It's so good.

Two women meet in a bar. Not the start of a joke either. They actually met in a group therapy session. They have both been through something very traumatic.

Amanda is grieving and can't seem to come to terms in any way with her loss. Her six year old daughter was taken. Then found in a dumpster dead. A week later her husband, who could not deal with this loss and blamed himself, took his own life. Amanda has no reason to carry on now. She's lost all of her will to live. The man who killed her daughter will never he held accountable for it. He is a murderer and has done it before. He is also mega rich. He and his dad can buy anything. Including a way out of being arrested for murder.

Ruth was alone in her home when a man broke in and brutally stabbed her. It was so vicious that she should not have survived. She won't ever forget those cold steel blue eyes. She wakes up in the hospital with her husband at her side. She's got so many stab marks and the doctor told her she would never be able to carry a baby. It might even be dangerous for her. She is so terrified she won't even leave her own home. No going outside. Her husband, Scott, feels so helpless. He should have been there. He should have protected her.

You will meet three women. Amanda, Naomi, and Ruth. Amanda and Naomi are the two who meet in a group session and later at the bar. They are the two who agreed to kill the men who destroyed their lives.

This book has all the twists and turns that make a great thriller. It has just enough emotion to bring big tears to your eyes in places also. I found myself cringing so much and even saying "Look out" a few times. lol It's one that kept me guessing all the way. Right before one part I thought I had a person pegged as bad and I was right but that was just to easy and I'm sure planned by the author. I liked most of these characters. Even though some were truly bad I felt awful for them. My heart broke for Ruth. I also loved her husband. He felt so awful and tried so hard. Amanda I also liked immensely. She suffered such a horrific loss. No mother should ever go through that. I liked the main detective on these cases also. Detective Farrow. He only wanted to solve these cases. He could not rest until things were made right. I liked him...

There are several things going on but it's so easy to follow. Lots of dead bodies. Some losses are just to painful to accept. Some losses have to be avenged.

Thank you #NetGalley, #SteveCavanagh, #AtriaBooks, for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts about this book.

Five big huge stars. If you like thrillers you will love this one.

Wow wow wow wow wow.

I am an avid thriller reader so I am not always surprised by a twist. However, Kill for Me, Kill for You ticked every box for me. The dual POVs at first felt like two separate books and I was so confused on how everyone was going to come together. Then we got our FIRST major twist. I wish I could live inside of Steve Cavanagh’s head. The twists were so smart. I had to go back and reread some things to make sure I hadn’t missed anything because he really got me.

I loved this book so much and would definitely recommend to anyone.

Synopsis:

Amanda and Wendy meet at a grief support group. They decide to meet afterwards and realize they have a lot in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the person who put them in the situation they’re in. As they talk, they decide to trade favors, if you kill for me, I’ll kill for you.

What could go wrong?

Thoughts:

What a wild ride this book was. I thought that it was going to go one way based on how things were going in the beginning of the book, but then the twists started happening and boy they kept coming. While this book wasn’t completely original, it did have some fresh new twists that were a lot of fun. I felt the entire time I knew how it was going to go, and then it would zag when I thought zig and it was great. It kept me on my toes, and I loved it so much.

This book started at a moderate pace, but then it just picks up and gets going and you don’t want to put it down. It took a little while to get into it, but it was building things up and I enjoyed the ride. I do wish that things would have gotten to the point a little quicker, but it worked out.

My favorite part was the ending, not because it was over, that wasn’t it, but because of the final twist, it just made me go “oh wow”. Again, while familiar, it was not what I expected, so it was a lot of, and I really enjoyed it. I love it when an ending can totally take me by surprise, especially after going through the entire book and build up.

I enjoyed getting this book from a few different points of view. The two main ones were great, and I especially enjoyed the police officers’ point of view, I wish we would have had more of theirs. I often struggle when there are more than a few points of view, but in this case, it totally worked and I enjoyed it.

This is one of those books that you won’t want to put down and will leave you in awe until the last page. It’s an emotional roller coaster and not one that I wanted to get off.

4.5 stars rounded up

There is sizzling suspense in this take on the movie ‘Strangers on a Train’. Amanda is suffering the deepest pain imaginable – the deaths of both her sparkling daughter and her life partner. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one to violence will relate to Amanda, feel her anguish and need for justice. Nothing dulls her pain, not alcohol, not pills, not the bereavement support groups that are supposed to be a comfort. The detectives in her daughter’s open murder case try to encourage Amanda, but the perpetrator may not be punished. A woman at one of the support groups proposes an alternative form of justice. She’s had a similar loss without satisfactory closure. So she’ll take care of the man who murdered Amanda’s daughter if Amanda does the same for her. The plan goes awry and events spiral beyond anything you could predict of expect. The problem with revenge is that it doesn’t bring an end to the pain of loss. The story is set in New York, the perfect place to be anonymous, hide in plain sight. It is related alternately between characters as the tension builds almost unbearably. It’s one of those plots that you say ‘of course it was them! ‘ when the murderer is finally revealed. I kept thinking I should’ve seen that coming. I guessed a few details but there are multiple false leads, red herrings and so much deception it made my head spin. I felt like kicking myself for not piecing it all together. It was a great read from an author I have never read before, but he’s on my radar now.
Thank for the advance reader’s proof of “Kill For Me, Kill For You” by Steve Cavanagh, Atria Books, provided by NetGalley. These are always my own honest personal thoughts and opinions given voluntarily without compensation.

Kill for Me, Kill for You by Steve Cavanagh is a psychological thriller about two women that agree to take revenge for each other. Similar to Strangers on a Train, but with a lot more twists. This was a really fun, fast-paced read, and I highly recommend it. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

Wow, this book was SOOOOO good and now I have the biggest book hangover!! This is hands down the best thriller of the year for me so far!

Synopsis:

Two women that have been wronged agree to kill the other man responsible for their loss. Amanda lost her daughter and husband in the same year and Naomi lost her daughter to a man that had benn sexualy abusing her.

Both feel the only way they can move on with their life is to make sure the people responsible get the ultimate justice.

My thoughts:
I would have never guessed how the three stories intersected. But wow this is the first book in a long time that actually had me scared with heart racing a couple of times. This is a thriller in the truest sense! Not only did the book scare me but it also brought me to tears a couple of times because the grief was palpable that these women and their loved ones felt. I really feel the theme of this book could be that vigilante justice is illegal for a reason. Despite how ineffective our legal system seems at times when we stoop to an eye for an eye mentality it only creates chaos. I was so excited to discuss this book with my good friend at my school.

I was super entertained by this one! There were twists and turns and surprises up until the very end. Definitely recommend for a psychological thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat! I didn’t love how the ending turned out, but can’t share more without spoilers ;) 4⭐️!

**Many thanks to NetGalley, Atria, and Steve Cavanagh for a DRC in exchange for an honest review!**

"She was looking forward to seeing him. Anticipating the bitter sight of him walking free. It was something to fill the nothing. Until she could figure out a way to kill him."

Amanda knows that as quickly as you can find everything your heart desires...it can all be taken away in an instant. After tragically losing her 6 YEAR OLD daughter, a few days later, her emotionally destroyed husband takes his own life...leaving Amanda TRULY alone. In the time since his passing, she's been fighting to make it through each day...and is hell bent on dispensing a little vigilante justice against the man she holds responsible for the deaths, Walter Crone. She has his routine down pat, and shows up on the train he takes at just the right time, gun in pocket...but her plan falls to pieces, leaving her utterly bereft once again.

Until one night at a grief group, when she finds a sort of comfort she WASN'T expecting...in the form of another woman named Wendy, who she later learns is determined to dispense MORE than a little justice of her own. The two bond over drinks, and Wendy casually asks Amanda if she's ever heard of Patricia Highsmith...specifically, Highsmith's famous Strangers on a Train, where two strangers meet and agree to a devious, cunning, and complex crime: each will murder someone "for" the other...and since nothing would be tying the two 'random' perps together, they feel certain they can 'get away' with BOTH murders.

Although the prospect seems far-fetched in some ways, Amanda is desperate and the more she ponders the possibility of a life without Crone and the possibility the police would NEVER be able to tie it back to her...it almost seems crazy not to try it. But after Amanda learns a bit more about Wendy...is she in over her head? Or does this duplicitous scheme run deeper than she ever could have imagined...and who IS the man she was meant to kill, anyway....and WHY does Wendy want him dead?

Meanwhile, Ruth is recovering from an attack after a home invasion. Her husband Scott was out at the time, and Ruth was stabbed viciously by an unknown attacker...and the police still haven't scooped him up just yet. Part of the reason for this is that Ruth hardly remembers ANYTHING about the man who nearly took her life...aside from his almost shocking, almost inhuman blue eyes. So imagine her surprise when she's finally out and about with her husband one night...and SEES the perp, right in the flesh, from across the room. It turns out that Amanda and Wendy might not be the ONLY two out for revenge in this tale...and something inside Scott tells him he might not get THIS kind of opportunity twice. But what exactly will Detectives Farrow and Hernandez FIND once they start doing a little digging? Will all of these newbie murderers get away with their crimes? Or is there an even more complicated web tying all of them together in more complex -and deadly-ways than they even imagined?

After reading so many rave reviews for MANY different installments of Steve Cavanagh's Eddie Flynn series detailing the compulsively readable, clever, and addicting nature of his books, I've been eagerly chomping at the bit to explore anything Cavanagh I could grab, and luckily this book happened to fall into my hands at the PERFECT time. Having a standalone as a lead in was a great way to a feel for the 'flavor' and see if Cavanagh was the sort of auto-read thriller author I've been longing to add to my list...or if his books would fall into too much of a legal/police procedural lane to FULLY draw me in.

Well. I am nothing short of ECSTATIC to confirm that this devilishly twisty, pulse-pounding, thrill a minute read was JUST the tonic I needed to drag me headlong out of the winter blues and get me primed and ready for SUMMER THRILLER SEASON!

Cavanagh certainly isn't the first to utilize the Strangers on a Train conceit (see: Peter Swanson's The Kind Worth Killing, along with MANY, many others) and of course, Highsmith walked so some of these newer authors in the genre could run. But what Cavanagh does here to include the premise is nothing short of brilliant: he actually allows his CHARACTER to reference the plot in an almost-meta like way, which plays as both a respectful nod and a way to accelerate the plot forward faster than, well, a bullet train if you will! After the slow set up at the beginning with the background of Amanda and Ruth, I was beginning to wonder if this was going to play a bit more like a sad domestic drama with a tinge of unsolved mystery thrown in...but ALL I had to do was wait.

Once Amanda and Wendy meet...we are truly off to the races, and promise me, you won't have TIME to look back!

Cavanagh effortlessly tosses us from POV to POV, and I found myself intrigued by ALL of them, which is always such a relief in books like this one, ESPECIALLY ones where you aren't quite sure if you like or trust ANY of the characters. Even the detectives were sharp and funny, not the sort of dimwitted buffoons you often see in thrillers. You know, the kind where you aren't surprised an armchair detective made the discovery because the ACTUAL detectives are truly THAT incompetent...nope, none of that here. This has the feel of a popcorn thriller, but it's more like an elevated popcorn read: a gourmet, seasoned popcorn read if you will! I tore through the virtual pages, blown away by reveal after reveal, and starting to wonder if ANY of my theories (or half baked theories) would come to fruition.

And then I got to THAT twist, at about 96%...and when I say the biggest grin came across my face, and I got that insane rush of adrenaline you ONLY get from a book that is just THAT good, where you want to tell everyone around you just HOW good it was...it's no exaggeration. When you can actually REPLAY that moment in your mind, almost word for word, even after finishing several books since then...it's a clear indicator that this one is something special...and that it EASILY claimed a well-earned spot in my favorite thrillers list as well as my 2024 favorites list!

And although it's a bit macabre, with a title like this one, I couldn't help but sing it in my head to the melody to "Tea for Two"...

"Tea for two and two for tea...A kill for you, a kill for me."

But maybe I should at least skip the tap dancing?

4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 for THAT TWIST!

Thank you @atriabooks @netgalley for the gifted copy/ARC!

♦️ 𝙈𝙮 𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 ♦️
Do not sleep on this twisty thriller! This was my first read by this author and definitely will not be my last! Best advice, go in blind and stay for the wild ride!

There are two ladies who meet, Amanda and Wendy, who find out they have something in common - a desire for revenge against men that took everything from them and their families. They come up with a plan, if you kill for me, I’ll kill for you. That way, the police won’t suspect them for their opposite crimes.

Another lady, Ruth, is home alone one night when a stranger with piercing blue eyes breaks into her home and attacks her, almost leaving her for dead. She doesn’t feel safe as long as the unknown man is out there.

The book goes back and forth between Amanda, Ruth, and also a detective and husband. As you go into the book, you think you know what might happen and then bam! Nope, unexpected twists just shakes things up… again and again! When I got near the end of the book, I thought we had wrapped up the story and then another bomb detonates and adds another element to the story! This book will make you think about things not being black and white, but also in the gray area.

🎧 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙞𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚:
♦️ Psychological Thrillers
♦️ Unexpected Twists
♦️ Police Procedural
♦️ Fast Paced Thrillers

It has been a while since I have read a thriller that kept me on my toes and kept me guessing the entire time. This did all of that and more! Highly recommend for anyone that’s a fan of The Silent Patient.

A really good read that is narrated by three characters. Ruth, a woman who is victim of a crime, Farrow, a cop who doesn't give up and Amanda who's lost everything to a child predator. It all comes together with great characterization and dialogue that makes for a real page turner. A take on Strangers on a Train but maintains its own freshness. I recommend this one.

Copy provided by the publisher and netgalley

FIVE STARS! Wow, I loved this thriller. I have read a lot of thrillers marketed "in the vein of Strangers on the Train", Kill for Me, Kill for You did it in such a unique way. The pacing was just right, I was totally engaged from page one and I read it in two days. The multiple POVs worked well and the POV of the investigator gave it a crime fiction feel that I loved.

Count me in as a new Steve Cavanagh fan, I will absolutely pick up anything he writes! Thank you Atria and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.