I Bet You'd Look Good in a Coffin by Katy Brent - Review

I read the first Kitty Collins book in 2023 and reviewed it here. I liked it, so when I saw the second one in The Works or something I bought it for a few quid. It's been in my to be read basket for a while, and I finally picked it up right at the end of May. 

I'll say what I said before - some of this book is just plain satire, and it's very much a revenge story and maybe is supposed to empower women, and it's also not really a book of substance but it is very compelling reading. I compared her other book to a jam doughnut - not very good for you but it tastes nice occasionally. Do I think it's amazing literature? No. Will I read the next one? Absolutely. 

Kitty is turning thirty and she's celebrating with her boyfriend Charlie. She gets a beautiful diamond necklace from her mum, from whom she's estranged. Her mum lives in the South of France and sends Kitty a decent allowance each month, but they don't speak. Alongside the present is an invitation to her mum, Carmella's, wedding. To a man called Gabriel, who Kitty has never met and doesn't know. She isn't sure whether she will go or not. 

She has given up murdering but has found it hard to quit. She goes to a support group for angry women and gets incredibly angry about the ways in which women have been hurt and abused by men. She also can't stop herself from checking the social media of this incel/red pill bloke called Blaze Bundy. She literally can't stand him and she realises that he is threatening her. She is determined to find out who he is. 

Meanwhile Maisie is pregnant and Tor is seeing her therapist. Kitty is not happy about this so she goes off to meet him and threaten him a bit. She also hears at her support group that a famous TV presenter has groped the teenaged daughter of one of the attendees, so she goes off to meet him and ends up killing him. Because of course she does. She is in the middle of cleaning up when she gets an SOS from Charlie so has to rush home. 

Where there is no emergency, just a surprise party for Kitty's thirtieth! And her mother is there! And there's still a dead body that needs attending to! But then Kitty and Charlie have to head off to France for her mum's wedding and the presenter is merely 'missing'. Kitty has no chance to think about anything. 

A lot happens in this book and it was a bit hard to keep up at times. But I really did want Kitty to succeed and get some power over some terrible men too. I'm giving this four out of five. 

The Murder After The Night Before by Katy Brent - Review

I read How To Kill Men and Get Away With It last summer and liked it, so when I saw that Katy Brent had a new book out I was intrigued to read it. I bought this on Kindle for a couple of quid and picked it up in the middle of July. I had a quiet weekend with a lot of reading and made my way through this book. I found it compulsive reading, but... I think it's like a jam doughnut - it tastes really good at the time but it's not that good for you and you shouldn't eat nothing but jam doughnuts. I found it compelling but for odd reasons, I think. 

So, Molly Monroe is a journalist on a magazine called Girl Chat where she basically writes fluff pieces for pre teens about unicorns and stuff. She lives with her best friend, Posey Porter, (ridiculous names) in London. Posey is a serious journalist, working for The Post. Molly wakes up one morning, the day after her work Christmas party, and finds a strange man in her bed. He introduces himself as Jack. He says they didn't have sex but she has no recollection of what happened the night before or how she met him. She heads off to work. She's late and she's only there like twenty minutes when she realises that she has gone viral on social media. She was filmed the night before giving a blow job to a random man on a street and now everyone is slut shaming her and so on. Her boss isn't impressed and sends her home. Ordinarily she would talk to Posey, but Posey isn't home. She did email Molly the night before detailing that they had rowed and that they needed to talk it over, but Molly doesn't remember what the row was about. 

And then Molly finds Posey's body in the bath of her en suite. The police quickly shrug off the death as accidental - despite bruises on Posey's body, which is one of the plot holes that really bothered me - but Molly starts to dig around. It turns out that Posey was working on a story about the disappearance of a teenager called Lulu Lawrence (another ridiculous name). She was sixteen and reported missing a year before, but then her parents said she had gone to stay with a relative and the story died down. Posey was certain that there was more to it, and she has left a trail of breadcrumbs for Molly to follow to uncover the truth. 

I did find the mystery compelling, but I thought some of the reasons Molly had for either doing something or not doing something were stupid at times and just for plot reasons. I thought things worked out maybe a bit too pat at times, some things were just a little bit convenient for me. I am also not really sure how Posey and Molly were affording to live in this part of London, but there we are. Molly is mostly likeable but a bit insufferable at times. I also found her ability to remember things she had had conversations about months ago really annoying and unrealistic. 

There are some plot holes which I did find annoying. And there's a couple of glaring mistakes - for instance once around the timing of Lulu's disappearance, which I really felt someone should have picked up on - which frustrated me. For that reason I'm having to rate this lower than Katy's previous book. So it's a three out of five from me. I will probably read her next book too, though... everyone likes jam doughnuts once in a while!

How to Kill Men and Get Away With It by Katy Brent - Review

I bought this book in The Works when I was there in early June and picked it up right at the end of July. It really kept me intrigued, and I did enjoy the book, but I think it had its problems too. 

It is really similar to How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie, and I don't think that is a bad comparison. Katy is also a journalist and I honestly think journalists who turn novelists have a way of writing because of how they've been taught journalism. It isn't a bad thing at all, but it is noticeable, and it means that even if these two books didn't have quite similar themes, they would still feel similar.

Katy herself compares the book to My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite and I think that is a fair comparison too. As I said previously, I actually like this new trend of young women turning to a life of crime and think they end up being very witty books. You sort of want them to succeed even though you know they're committing bad crimes. 

So, Kitty Collins is about twenty nine, as far as I could fathom it, and she's very rich. Her dad owned a ton of abbatoirs and made his money that way (this is also the reason why Kitty is a vegan). He disappeared when she was a teenager, and her mum then moved to the south of France with her new partner. She gives Kitty a generous allowance every month but Kitty actually makes her own money from being an influencer on Instagram. She has three close friends and they spend their time going to clubs, parties, having brunch, and being seen in the right places. She lives in a fancy apartment. She seems to hate being an influencer and judges everyone on the terms of celebrity that she lives by. 

She is out one night when a creepy guy follows her and goes to attack her with a bottle. However, he falls on it and ends up dead... She didn't exactly do anything, but she does just leave him to die, too. And she gets away with it. She gets a taste for it, so when a douchey man ghosts her friend, she takes it on herself to get revenge. But she has this creepy stalker on Instagram, and it seems like they know everything Kitty is up to. Can Kitty stay one step ahead? 

So much of this book makes no sense - for instance she uses her own phone while catfishing on Tinder, and drives her own car to and from murder sights, both of which are things that you would think would mean the police would be on her tail immediately. She meets dishy Charlie, a philanthropist, and really wants to just be with him, but men will just keep misbehaving and she feels the need to take them out. Then there's her murky past, too... I get that this book is satire and it really did work for me on most levels, except for the forensic stuff mentioned above because even police aren't that stupid.

But I did enjoy reading this and found it really compelling despite myself. Basically everyone is a terrible human being, even Charlie. I did guess a few of the twists but that's just how it goes! I'm giving this four out of five!