Love In The Time Of Serial Killers

Turns out that reading nothing but true crime isn’t exactly conducive to modern dating—and one woman is going to have to learn how to give love a chance when she’s used to suspecting the worst.

PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She’s even analyzing the genre in her dissertation—if she can manage to finish writing it. It’s hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn’t had a relationship with for years.

It doesn’t help that she’s low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer (he may dress business casual by day, but at night he’s clearly up to something). It’s not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier—a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

I don’t know why, but I thought this book was going to have a bit of a mystery element (sometimes with library books, I just jump in without refreshing myself on the synopsis, and I think the title and cover confused me!). But turned out to be a pretty straightforward contemporary romance.

This was good, but at times it was so slow and felt like nothing was happening. The romance was sweet, and Sam was adorable. But my favourite relationship was Phoebe and her brother’s, and watching them reconnect and grow closer was very heartwarming.

I’m not a true crime reader but I quite enjoyed reading about Phoebe’s dissertation (although the deadlines and the way she put off working on it at times made me so anxious!).

I think if you are a bigger contemporary romance reader than I am, you’ll get more out of this than I did, but it was a good read.