How to Kill Your Best Friend – Lexie Elliot
There seems to be an upswing in casual crime novels about killing people you’re supposed to care about – last year brought us Bella Mackie’s awesome How to Kill Your Family, and now Lexie Elliot comes in with How to Kill Your Best Friend. Fitting that I was reading this while visiting one of my best friends… Though, unfortunately, not on a lovely beach, but in a city heatwave.
Many thanks to Amber and Hannah at Midas PR for sending me a review copy. All opinions are my own.
RELEASE DATE: 02/09/2022
STAR RATING: 3/5 ✶
SUMMARY: Georgie, Lissa and Bronwyn have been best friends since they met on their college swimming team. Now Lissa is dead – drowned off the coast of the remote island where her second husband owns a luxury resort. But could a star open-water swimmer really have drowned? Or is something more sinister going on?
Brought together for Lissa’s memorial, Georgie, Bron, Lissa’s grieving husband and their friends find themselves questioning the circumstances around Lissa’s death – and each other. As the weather turns ominous, trapping the guests on the island, it slowly dawns on them that Lissa’s death was only the beginning. Nobody knows who they can trust. Or if they’ll make it off the island alive… (from Corvus)
OPINIONS: I was drawn into this by the title and cover, to be entirely honest. I have been on a bit of a mystery binge for comfort reading, and it intrigued me – especially as someone who adores water and would like nothing more than to be able to go for a daily open-water swim. But I found this an odd read. The most jarring element, to me, was that not a single one of the characters, of this supposed friend group, seemed to actually like each other. And yes, it may have been one of those situations where you become friends, and then stay friends out of habit, but it was still strange. There just wasn’t any true affection between any of them, and at various points of the story I thought any one of them had reason to commit the inciting murder.
I did really like the atmosphere, the backdrop of an isolated island together with a crumbling world of luxury. And I do have to give this one to Lexie Elliot, despite the characters frustrating me to no end, they were all complex and multi-layered, interesting people. But ultimately the pacing of the story felt off, with too much happening at once, and then not for a long time, and then pivoting in a completely different direction. It was a fun read, and I breezed through it rather quickly. But in the end, it didn’t feel as satisfying as I was hoping it would, and I was left slightly disappointed with the book as a whole.
If you’re intrigued, you can add How to Kill Your Best Friend to your Goodreads here, and order a copy via Bookshop here.