Kill Your Darlings By Peter Swanson Source Purchased
Published by William Morrow on June 10, 2025
Rating:
Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well…except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.
What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives—their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason’s birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague—all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.
Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.
This was a quick read with a great opening, which turned out to be the strongest part of this mean, nasty (complimentary) book for me. It was too hard to top such a gripping start!
This is not so much a whodunnit as it as a whatdunnit and whydunnit! We know from the beginning that Thom and Wendy did something in their past, which has kept them tied together all these years, and as the book goes on, we slowly learn, in reverse, who did what and why.
The characters are all fairly unlikable, which was fun at times, but got a bit grating as I read on. And while I liked the idea of the story’s narrative going back in time, in practice I found it a bit tricky to remember who knew what/what hadn’t happened yet/who some of the characters were when first mentioned, etc. while reading. I also didn’t pick up on the ‘aha’ moment at the very end because I couldn’t follow the backwards progression that well.
That said, once I finished and skimmed through things a second time, I could see the pieces and how they fit together better, and appreciate the way this was crafted, and I do love it when a writer tries something different from typical linear storytelling (even when I can’t quite keep up!).
