How To Kill Men And Get Away With It by Katy Brent

Do you walk home at night with keys between your fingers in the hopes of evading an attacker?
Are you sick of others preaching self defence techniques instead of tackling the actual threat?
Do you wish there was a vigilante scouring your streets,  Dexter-style, ridding society of dangerous men?

Well look no further; this book will have you cheering for each neck slashed and every eye taken out.

Katy Brent is a new author to me and I took a gamble on her book How To Kill Men And Get Away With It when I saw it on Tesco's shelves while out getting my morning croissant and coffee (I both love and loathe there being a book section on my morning routine) and I'm so glad I did.

The title is what drew me in - how to kill men? Plural? Why would you want to? Allow Katy Brent to tell you why. This book will have you fuming from the ears, encouraging multiple murders and double-checking you're not secretly a psychopath.

*Trigger warning - the following contains mentions of sexual assault and violence towards women*

The main plot: 

We begin in Chelsea, England; Kitty Collins is a top-tier Instagram influencer and though the socials pay her bills, she finds everything online ludicrously fake and unbearable. She's highly pragmatic with a sharp wisdom earned from personal hardship and observation. Decidedly single after a monumental betrayal from an ex-boyfriend, she navigates the daily dangers of bad men with an air of dark wittiness and an anger that can only bring about a terrible thirst for revenge. 

With 3 best friends by her side who are more like sisters, an absent mother in Southern France and a missing father, we're in for a hell of a ride with Kitty at the helm.

A chance night out with her girlfriends has one particular man getting handsy with Kitty, thinking that buying her a couple of drinks at the bar entitles him to... Well, whatever it is that these kinds of men think they're entitled to from women. He stalks Kitty from the bar as she heads home; when they're in a secluded area he throws a large wine bottle at her, but in his drunken state it only smashes at her feet. She confronts him and he threatens her, letting her know he could rape her or do worse if he wanted to - and she realises he absolutely could.

Remaining calm, she walks away again, tells him diplomatically but firmly that he is not to follow her home. He attacks her but she knees him hard in the groin where he stumbles and falls face first into the pathway. Kitty finds he's fallen into the broken bottle and cut his throat fatally, but she doesn't seem fussed,

'The blood continues to pump from his body. It follows towards my shoes for a moment, transfixing me.

Then I step around it and continue my walk home.

Well.

It's not like I can call an ambulance, is it?'

Be honest, would you have done much differently?

The police treats this creep's death as a drunken accident and our protagonist gets away with it! Not that she really got away with anything - the dude attacked her and got what he deserved.

Kitty soon finds her second victim in the form of a nasty man who hurt one of her best friends. She makes a Tinder profile, finds and meets the guy at his house under the guise of a 'first date', which begins with his true colours showing (his 'colours' being misogyny) and ends with his death, which she again covers up.

After noticing how the world is better off without these guys in it, Kitty decides her purpose in life is killing off dangerous men. She actively hunts these guys with the explicit intent to end their lives and save women from being any kind of a victim to them. The sticky situations she gets herself into and how she figures ways out of them is just mind-bending. 

Did you ever hear of the female sharpshooter who was in the African plains, shooting off poachers? Kitty is an English version of Kinessa Johnson - Grade-A badass.

With the help of Tinder and her background being a 'meat heiress' she finds her work thrilling and almost charitable. The only question she has when a genuinely good man comes into her life is, how can she juggle a man worth his weight in gold and her murderous sights on bad guys?

I won't go any further into the plot - you'll have to read and find out yourself!

Let's get into the positive and negative aspects of this novel:

➕ I loved how chapter after chapter of this book had my blood boiling at the male characters (in the best way), seeing men from my own past reflected in them. Katy's writing totally captured the plight women all deal with and put it so perfectly on paper; it had me fully absorbed with every turn of the page. Now what we need is men to read this book, understand the fear and start doing better, if they haven't already, otherwise who knows? Maybe Kitty Collins will emerge into the real world.

➖ One or two of the murders that got a bit sticky that had Kitty disposing of them in strange ways had me scratching my head at how it could be plausible. I just didn't see at least one of the murders not being linked to her and her entire blood-covered path being thrown into the light.

➕ A big plus for me personally was the chapter breaks; I could end one chapter and pick up the next hours later and not feel like I had to re-read anything to remind myself where I was. Too many books these days don't know the difference it makes to the reader to properly end chapters - instead they break up big paragraphs by turning them into separate chapters. I appreciate the transitioning here, it was easier to become absorbed in the story this way without needing to go back.

➕ The humour in this book was directly aimed at my funny bone. I don't know if it's just the dark humour I'm into, the way Kitty/Katy delivers it or that it surrounds topics I can relate to but it really had me in fits of giggles over the most grotesque stuff! Sexual laughs are in there too, best friend humour, it's just an all around funny story as well as a kind of hero tale. I loved every page, especially the ones where Kitty is juggling normal life problems like a new beau while killing men in her spare time.

For this masterpiece, I've got to give it a 5/5! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

For anyone looking for a new and exciting read - this novel has got everything: a hero, humour, murder and intrigue. Eye-opening and fantastic at bringing out every woman's inner psychopath. Thank you to Katy Brent for this piece of absolute art. Happy reading, and let me know in the comments if you've already read this or are about to! I'd love to know your thoughts 😀