I don't want to know how much it say about me that I love novels about vendetta-driven women serial killers.

Claire is a practiced murderer, but after her father's death, she is *rattled.* For the first time ever, she makes mistakes. Too late, she realizes she may have targeted someone too dangerous. And then...

I ended up getting the audiobook version because the ebook didn't grip me. Great choice! The narration is excellent, emotive, and reminiscent of Santino Fontana's You.

10% humor, 20% serial killing, 30% whodunit, and 40% rooting for the antihero while her character unfolds. Beyond the (deserved?) murders, there's a fair bit of child abuse, so CW.

5 stars, easy.

This book is horrible in the best possible way.

You don't want to get on Claire's wrong side. She generally focuses on creeps, but an occasional nice person can come up against her knife, gun, hammer, pillow, fish pond, etc. She is a true artist, not just with her painting, but with her creative and well-planned methods of execution. However, one night, a minor slip makes the wrong creep suspicious, and things quickly get out of control.

This book was a wild ride through many sick and twisted minds. Wonderful!

This was not darkly humorous or interesting in any way that it was sold to me. Typically I like getting the POV of a serial killer because I like getting the inner workings of their minds but my god this MC was just a stale saltine cracker. Add that to the fact that there wasn't a single likeable character and the narration was dreadfully dull and you have the perfect recipe for a book that I have no idea how I managed to make it past 10%.

This is one of those ones that I'm just not sure how so many people love it because other than being well written prose wise, there isn't much that is well done here.

I didn't expect to enjoy this book! I love the dark, sarcastic comedy and the many twists and turns in the story. I enjoyed every page and hoping to read more of Joanna Wallace's books in the future!

Claire is a serial killer who is anything if not odd. This book was so different than what I expected, but I still really enjoyed it. If you like books that are a little different and that have deep character depth, I'd definitely give it a try.

You'd Look Better as a Ghost was not what I was expecting, but was pleasantly surprised at how much I still enjoyed it. Despite being a story of a serial killer, there was a good amount of comic relief and plenty of surprises. Overall, this book was highly entertaining and enjoyable, and I thought was very well-written.

Reading YOU'D LOOK BETTER AS A GHOST is a little like following the directions from your GPS and at the end of a baffling journey realizing that you would have missed so much if you'd taken the old path you knew while still inexplicitly arriving at your destination despite never knowing exactly where you were going or how you were going to get there. In other words, it is a perfect twisty, twisted tale.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.

I didn't enjoy this book at all. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be satire or what, but it wasn't funny at all. Instead it boiled down to a woman that killed people simply because they annoyed her. The MC wasn't charming. She wasn't funny. She wasn't remotely likeable. The book was a slog to read and I wish I'd dnf'd it.

Like Dexter, Claire only kills those who deserve it, like the guy whose email interrupts her father’s funeral to mistakenly congratulate her on being a finalist for an art prize, only to say he got the wrong person. This creepy thriller is sharply funny and insightful as you root for the serial killer caught in the midst of deep grief.

(Actual: 3.5⭐) This book has such an interesting premise and I do love me some good, dark humor, so I really did enjoy this book for what it was. That being said, it did meander and fall a bit short pacing-wise for me in the middle (to the point where I put it down for awhile— NOT because I stopped liking it or anything, but literally just because I felt like it could wait, if that makes sense), so that might be my only "true" gripe. Otherwise, this was a solid read with a unique premise and decently likeable (or, at the very least, relatable) MC; I'd be more than happy to read more of Wallace's work in the future!

This was such a great story! I really loved reading from the perspective of Claire. You're not really rooting for the decisions she makes but you're always entertained by her and the way she thinks and approaches problem-solving. I definitely recommend this to any thriller fan or anyone who is interested in anti-hero protagonists.

All my friends were raving about this book and I can see why. It’s humorous but a little dark! Need to have more female killers in fiction. They’re fun to read.

Dark humor is my favorite type of humor, and I was craving for a book to just dive right into. 'You'd Look Better as a Ghost' seemed like the perfect one. With dark humor, you expect dark themes and Wallace's book was full of them, however, I'm not sure if it is me but I expected a lot more humor to shine through all the dark. I was also struggling a bit with the characters. They were all just so unlikable. I was hoping to connect with Claire slightly (even though she kills people) and while I was empathic to her childhood (her mom can burn in the hottest pits of hell) I was just not expecting her to be so EMO. Don't get me wrong, not all MC's need to be likable but in this case, it would have helped. Despite this Wallace is a talented writer and I did enjoy the mystery portion of the plot.

Overall, interesting story.

You'd Look Better as a Ghost is one of those "on the nose" stories about a fictional serial killer who wishes to be known for her artwork rather than the bodies of those she's killed. Much like Dexter, Claire goes after people who seem to deserve it (though some appear to only be guilty of poor judgement), though she does not research her victims thoroughly enough at times, to her detriment.
You'd Look Better as a Ghost makes a great escapism fiction, written in the "then/now" format (alternating every 3-4 chapters) that has gotten overly popular. As a reader, one gets a good look at who Claire is, but often her victims and the surrounding characters come across as flat and uninteresting. From Claire's point of view, the world often seems flat and uninteresting, which might have more to say about her than it does the world she inhabits.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Penguin Books for providing this book, with my honest review below.

You’d Look Better as a Ghost had a fascinating premise and main character. I love exploring fiction with less mainstream main characters like Claire, a female serial killer. You’d Look Better as a Ghost definitely delivered on that. Ultimately the flow just didn’t work for me, I didn’t leave wanting more or looking for anything that helped me understand the story better. I think this is just personal tastes as this left me a little deflated. I felt there was so much more that could have been done or delivered on. A well written book and very interesting, just didn’t really go to the (likely more extreme) places that I wished it would.

I’m not sure I should be rooting for Clare, a serial killer who hates mostly everyone and kills off whoever she pleases, but she came to slay (literally)

Didn't finish this, was not at all what I expected from the synopsis. Certainly not bad, but don't feel that we need this in our collection.

If you're in the mood for a book about a female serial killer, this is for you. Had some good twists and turns. I zipped right through it. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC of this book. This was a darkly funny book about a female serial killer and I loved it! The storyline was good and characters were well done. I loved the way the story developed for our main character.

It was really witty and held my attention from the beginning. But the plot of a serial killer is not my cup of tea