Review: A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage: A Novel

A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage: A Novel by Asia Mackay
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I needed time to think about this book before writing my review. This book is a curious mix of a horror novel and family fiction. I was going to DNF this book, but curiosity, more than anything, had me reading until the end.

Fox and Haze seem to be the perfect couple, and they are as long as they are killing evil men. Once they had their child, life changed. No more killing, and from there, life goes totally downhill for them. Also, note that Fox is ultra-rich with what appears to be a good job. Haze is a famous artist renowned for her mixed-media canvases. You can imagine what she mixed into her paintings! They had met in Paris when Haze was caught by Fox taking care of business - shall we say.

The whole plot is a bit unbelievable, but that is fiction, right? Well, the ending is even more unbelievable but somewhat clever.

What I did have were significant issues with the whining and moaning from Haze -and she whined and moaned about everything. We get that she had a bad childhood. For goodness sake, you can't pick up a book today where someone isn't blaming everything in their lives about their childhoods. Fox wasn't much better, and all this inner dialoguing eventually got on my nerves to the point that I just didn't care what happened to them.

Fantasy fairy tale ending *sigh*, what are you going to do?

*ARC was supplied by the publisher Bantam/Random House, the author, and NetGalley.

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SYNOPSIS: "Two former serial killers trying to keep their past buried realize that old habits die hard in this “wildly original, razor-sharp thriller” (Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestsellingauthor of All the Colors of the Dark).

I wasn't smashing the patriarchy; I was killing it. Literally.

Hazel and Fox are an ordinary married couple with a baby. Except for one small thing: they're murderers. Well, they used to be. They had it all. An enviable London lifestyle, five-star travels, and plenty of bad men to rid from the world. Then Hazel got pregnant.

Now, they’re just another mom-and-dad-and-baby. They gave up vigilante justice for life in the suburbs: arranged play dates instead of body disposals, diapers over daggers, mommy conversations instead of the sweet seduction right before a kill. Hazel finds her new life terribly dull. And the more she forces herself to play her monotonous, predictable role, the more she begins to feel that murderous itch again.

Meanwhile, Fox has really taken to being a father. Always the planner, he loves being five steps ahead of everyone and knowing exactly what’s coming around the bend. Plus, if anyone can understand Hazel needing one more kill, it’s Fox. But then Hazel kills someone without telling Fox. And when police show up at their door, Hazel realizes it will take everything she has to keep her family together."