Becky's Great Book Reviews Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson

Peter Swanson's Kill Your Darlings is a study in narcissism. Married for thirty plus years, the book opens with Wendy plotting to kill Thom. But Wendy isn't the only detestable one; Thom matches Wendy's sociopathy, and they've grown into it together.

The novel moves backwards through time. Year by year, month by month, then day by day, Peter Swanson takes us through the entire relationship between Wendy and Thom all the way back to when they shared their first kiss near the "Exorcist stairs" in Washington DC as eight graders (how appropriate). Meeting up again when Wendy is married to someone else and Thom is living with a girlfriend; they bond over a diabolical scheme to get rid of Wendy's rich husband and take his trust fund money.

Swanson gives Thom and Wendy just enough empathetic traits to make us care, like how much they love their son and how Wendy wants to support her mother financially. But we see how their moral compasses deteriorate starting with their first crime. Wendy's callousness shows itself when she is musing to Thom about how she thinks birthdays and milestones are meaningless. She says about life, "it's all meaningless, really". And Thom's firm view of how special they are because of their "grand romance" confirms his belief that killing to be together is justified.

The dark family secret that's revealed about Wendy went just a short way to explain her personhood, and Thom's background wasn't delved into much at all. The two were fascinating to read about, but this reader wanted more (although I acknowledge that sometimes killers cannot be explained in real life). The ending also left me with questions about Thom and Wendy's present, during which the story opened.

All in all, reading about Thom and Wendy was compelling, and I will always pick up a thriller by Peter Swanson. I give Kill Your Darlings three stars out of five.