TITLE: I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER
AUTHOR: Dan Wells
RATING OVERVIEW
Writing: ★★★★★
Story: ★★★★★
Characters: ★★★★★
Appearance: ★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★★ (5)
AMAZON DESCRIPTION:
John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it.
He’s spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.
He’s obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he’s written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.
Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don’t demand or expect the empathy he’s unable to offer. Perhaps that’s what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there’s something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat—and to appreciate what that difference means.
Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can’t control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.
Dan Wells’s debut novel, I Am Not a Serial Killer, is the first volume of a trilogy that will keep you awake and then haunt your dreams.
Buy it HERE on Amazon!
THE CRITICAL POINTS
WRITING: I love Dan Wells’s writing style. He dives deep into the mind of a psychopath with this one and leaves you disgusted, intrigued, afraid, and sad. His use of description left me with a new determination that after death, I want to be cremated. There will be no embalming, no open casket, no mortician poking and prodding along my body to “make it pretty”.
STORY: We start of by being introduced to a young John Wayne Cleaver, the stories protagonist. He is the perfect combination of Michael C Hall’s characters in both Dexter (where he plays a psychopath) and Six Feet Under (where his family owns a funeral home). John Wayne Cleaver is the teenage version of Dexter. Although instead of an obsession with forensic science and blood, his obsession is serial killers. John has all the impulses of a psychopath… he feels the draw of the kill, but he doesn’t want to act on those impulses. Like Dexter, he has established strict rules to live by, rules he must follow to keep him “normal”.
The twist takes place when a “real” serial killer shows up in John’s town. Through John’s research we quickly learn that this serial killer isn’t like any of the others he has studied. Not even close. The supernatural aspect of this killer takes the story to a whole new level. I loved watching as John was discovering who he is, who the killer is, what the killer is, and how his inner struggle of wanting to know more about death and killing and also wanting to be normal effected his choices.
APPEARANCE: The simple cover, much like a young kid’s school notebook, was excellent. The cover artist did a wonderful job making it appealing to the eye and not overly crowded.
MY FAVORITE QUOTE: “The thing about boxes, is that you can open them up. Even though they’re completely boring on the outside, there might be something interesting inside. So while you’re saying all of these stupid, boring things, I’m imagining what it would be like to cut you open and see what you’ve got in there.”
Nina Soden 