An excellent, suspenseful thriller with a difference. The premise immediately caught my attention, and I'm happy to report that it delivered. Well-written (and translated), populated by interesting and well-drawn characters. There were times when it was a bit graphic for my taste, but not gratuitously so.

A must for fans of psychological thrillers.

A really intriguing premise! I had high hopes as it starts out but as I read further, the storyline seemed to veer off course and I found the hallucinations were not as 'real' as the author wanted us to believe.
Also the writing was only passable. A thriller meant for a beach read perhaps I DNF

Plot: Ted had the perfect life, with a family he loves and a good job. So why is he holding a gun to his own temple, about to pull the trigger, when his doorbell rings? Terminal brain cancer is why. But the stranger at the door offers him an alternative: he can kill 2 people before he dies, one who is a criminal, the other who is someone terminally ill like himself, so that they don’t have do the deed themselves and have their family find them. In return, Ted will then become the target – a suicide chain, if you will.

My thoughts: If you’re looking for a psychological thriller that’s fast-paced and will mess with your mind, I’d say this is a pretty strong contender! Understandably, Ted isn’t the most reliable narrator considering the brain tumour he’s living with, but working with a therapist, it becomes apparent that he has some pretty dark secrets too.
The novel is full of all the twists and turns that I love in a book which meant it was a fun and thrilling read. It’s definitely unsettling and, I know it’s cliche to say, but really keeps you guessing about what’s going to happen next and in the end. It’s difficult say more without giving the game away, but it’s a good one, believe me!

Ted has it all it seems but the big "C" changes all that in an instant. This book will twist you up as you read the narrative style and then you begin to doubt if cancer is not affecting Ted the narrator. Ted learns in the end there are worse things; much worse things. I need to find earlier books by the author because I really liked this one.

I did not finish this book as I did not engage with this story at all.

Kill the Next One, Argentinean author Frederico Axat’s first novel translated into English literally has a killer premise. Ted McKay has put a gun to his own head, prepared to commit suicide when there is a knock at the door. A stranger enters and offers him a deal – to become part of a club where he kills someone who deserves to die and then kills someone who themselves is looking to commit suicide. He will then be killed in turn by an anonymous stranger, saving his family the torment of dealing with a suicide.
This premise is just the start of a twisty turny psychological thriller. Every fifty pages or so Axat overturns the previous section and delves deeper into the mind and history of Ted McKay. Because of this structure it is hard to get a handle on the character. The book depends on constantly wrong footing the reader and confounding expectations.
Kill the Next One is a strange proposition. It is, in the end, an onion-like puzzle built around a bizarre history and mental illness and it is difficult to talk about any more of the plot without heading into spoiler territory. As a result, it successfully shifts tonally from moral thriller to psychological investigation to a more conventional thriller as the pieces start to fall into place and the picture that Axat is constructing coalesces. The key aspect of this structure is that Kill the Next One keeps readers guessing and despite becoming a little frustrating at times, is very hard to put down.

When I read the description of this book I thought the plot sounded really interesting. In the blurb it says that nothing is what it seems.... and they weren't kidding! My head was spinning right from the first sentence.

"Ted McKay was about to put a bullet through his brain when the doorbell rang, insistently."

He waits because he knows he can't shoot himself while someone is at the door. Then he hears someone yelling for him to open the door. They tell him they know he's in there. He waits for them to leave. However, the person keeps ringing the bell, banging and yelling for Ted to open the door.

Thankfully his wife and children are out-of-town.

As he's waiting for the person to go away he notices a note on his desk. "Open the door. It's your only way out" the note says. He has no idea where this note came from but the thing that freaks him out is that it's his handwriting on the note. How could that be? He has no memory of writing it. Ted gives in and opens the door. The man introduces himself. His name is Justin Lynch and he tells Ted he'll explain everything if he will let him come in. Ted slams the door but then the man says something that makes him open it right back up...

"I know what you're about to do"

How could this man possibly know what Ted was about to do?

Justin says he knows that Ted wants to kill himself. Before Ted can say a word, Justin tells him he has a proposition for him. He's inviting him to join a very special organization. A sort of suicide club. However, in order to be a part of this group Ted will need to kill two men. Then in return someone will kill him. The reasoning behind this is that it's easier for a family to deal with someone being the victim of a tragedy than if the person committed suicide.

But why two murders? And how did they find out that Ted even wanted to kill himself?
Ted decides that he'll do it. However, things do not go as planned. First of all the intended victims aren't exactly like Justin described. Then weird things start happening. Ted begins having bizarre dreams. He feels like he's being watched and that he wasn't given all the information he would have needed to make a proper decision. Was that on purpose? Is Ted being manipulated somehow? From there, things get even worse and he starts to feel like he's losing his mind.

Dr. Laura Hill is Ted's therapist and she feels like she can help him. Through his meetings with Dr. Hill we are given some insight into Ted's past, his family life and some, very dark secrets.

I will stop there as I will be heading into spoiler territory if I say much more

After such a fantastic beginning I did feel the book start to drag a bit. It was interesting, but it felk like there was a lot of details and extra stuff that could have been left out. It felt like there were some holes in the plot which was a bit confusing and I would occasionally lose track of what was happening.

I enjoyed the book but it was completely different from what I was expecting, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There were a lot of good twists and turns that kept me turning pages. Just when I thought I had the real story it would take off in another direction. I would just start to understand a character and their motives....but then I'd be thrown way off again.

I was pretty satisfied with how it all came together and how the author wrapped things up....but the epilogue did baffle me a bit. I may have to check around because I'm curious about what happened. I almost feel like I'm missing something big.

Thank you NetGalley, Mulholland Books, and Frederico Axat for providing an advanced readers copy of this book for me to read in exchange for my honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Mulholland Books for offering me an ARC copy of the book that I voluntarily choose to review.
The description of the novel fascinated me both as a reader and as a psychiatrist, but although I couldn’t completely switch off the psychiatrist in me (probably even non-psychiatrist will be wondering about diagnostics and pathologies as they read), my review is as a reader. (I don’t think I could avoid spoilers if I tried to offer a psychiatric reading of the story, so I won’t).
I have seen quite a few comments comparing it to Christopher Nolan, Stephen King, to Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, Alfred Hitchcock, all apt comparisons, and I did think of Spellbound at some point. It is a clever and complex story divided into four books, that reflect different levels of insight and understanding, as we progressively enter deeper and deeper into Ted’s, the main character, mind.
The story is told in the third person from the point of view of the protagonist, Ted, whom we meet at a moment of crisis. The novel starts with a bang that will grab most readers, and it gets complicated as it moves along. What seemed a morally complex choice facing the protagonist becomes… Well, it’s not easy to know what. It’s difficult to talk about this book without revealing any spoilers, but let’s say that the level of confusion the reader experiences mirrors well that experienced by the main character, who finds it difficult to know what is true and what is not, if the people he meets are real or not, and if the experiences and memories he revisits in his mind are, or have been, real, or are simply figments of his imagination. The readers find themselves in the shoes of the protagonist, questioning everything they read and wondering how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.
The novel offers an explanation after another of what is happening and questions everything, from the soundness of mind of the protagonist and those around him to matters of identity, feelings, past and present, family relationships and notions of good and evil. It is a psychological thriller where we don’t even realise what really is at stake until quite late in the narration, which does not follow a standard format, and will fascinate those looking for something different and with an emphasis on the psychological.
The ending, that I did find more than satisfactory (although that might depend on the reader) made me question issues of narration once again and considering my fondness for unreliable narrators, although not narrated in the first person, this novel will definitely figure high in my list of recommendations. And I must try and make sure I read the author in Spanish too.

Kill the next one by Federico Axat had one of the most twisted plots that I have ever read. The story begins with Ted McKay just about to commit suicide before he interrupted and given an offer to kill two other men. One of the intended victims is also suicidal and needed help ending his life. The second victim is someone who had committed some vile crimes and so killing him will be a service to society. Sounds a bit straight forward, right?

The book has so many twists that I was confused at first. I felt like I did when I was watching Inception (the DiCaprio movie). Every time I thought that I had figured out the book, something new happened that threw the whole story into a different direction. I don’t want to spoil the book for those who haven’t read it yet but this book will mess with your mind so much that you won’t even know what is real and what is not.

It took a few chapters before I started figuring out the plot and becoming more engrossed in the narrative. Undoubtedly, the book has a unique premise and some of the most complex characters that I have ever encountered. I found myself sympathizing with the main character through some pages then being repulsed by him in other pages.

The book took me on a crazy roller-coaster ride and just when things started slowing down, a major twist was thrown into the mix throwing the story in another different direction towards the end. The twists and revelations made this a fascinating read. The mix of characters made it more entertaining. I can’t say much about the characters without giving too many details but they were definitely memorable. Even the support characters were well developed.

I am not sure how exactly to categorize this book. It is sort of a thriller with some elements of science fiction. Some chapters were super creepy with aspects of psychology coming into play while others were action filled. I recommend this book to fans of these genres.

I enjoyed the first 30% of this novel quite a bit but found the twists a quarter of the way through it too ridiculous and completely ruined the book for me

I really liked the original conceit of this book, though I think the summary copy is a bit misleading. The twists and turns kept me entertained and guessing, though at the end I felt weirdly unsatisfied, like there were some plot holes or things that didn't quite add up. It wasn't as tight as it could have been. Still, very interesting and imaginative and loved the twist on the noir story.

Incredible book that will stay with me for a long time

This is a cut above the usual mystery book. I found it highly enjoyable and intriguing from start to finish. The plot was very clever and well organized and there was not a dull or confusing moment. It was very well written. Even though a significant part of the book described the psychotic ramblings of a man trying to separate his delusions from reality, I was never lost. I was puzzled, but in a good way; I kept trying to guess what was really going on, which I believe was the author's intent.

The protagonist,Ted, is interrupted just as he is preparing to commit suicide by a persistent knocking on his door. He opens it to find a strange man, who inexplicably seems to know what Ted is intending to do, and offers him a highly unusual alternative solution. This begins a crazy series of events that spiral out of control. The plot was quite the wild ride but I enjoyed it immensely.

I was surprised by the revelation of the truth at the end, never even considering that explanation a possibility, but when revealed, it made sense. The author did leave a tantalizing tidbit at the end that was not explained, or at least I didn't understand its significance. In another book, I might have found this annoying, but for me it worked here. It just made me want to reread this in order to see if I might figure it out and better appreciate how it all these events fit together.

I highly recommend this book. I can't imagine anyone not finding this a fun, intriguing mystery.

A fascinating take on a murder mystery, told through the lens of mental illness, Kill the Next One begins with the protagonist interrupted during a suicide attempt. The first part of the book, which is divided into four distinct parts, reminded me a bit of Nouvelle Roman author Robbe-Grillet in its repetitive focus on detail as a means of building suspense. It is not until the end of part four that we, the readers, finally reach the gruesome and astonishing culmination of the seemingly endless plot twists and turns. Axat takes the unreliable narrator to a whole new level. This book will keep you on your toes.