#i never really understood why diane stuck by cordelia's side so much other than i guess sunk cost fallacy and time commitment

[the-blue-phantom]

the whole thing about This Girl's a Killer by Emma Wells is that it COULD have been a good book if it had taken its basic premise (female serial killer that only kills abusive or predatory men) and gone one of two directions with it: either making it a full satire of that genre of book or by making it a more serious analysis of it all. Instead it played it completely straight.

Which, sure, whatever that's fine and the story they wanted to tell and I could have probably enjoyed it just fine if it weren't for the fact that Cordelia Black is sooooo fucking bad at being a serial killer and if Wells hadn't set up the first half of the book for a perfect twist of "Cordelia is absolutely losing it and spiraling further and further". Or even if Wells hadn't been so desperate for Cordelia to be someone you like and root for.

I spent the first 40 pages of the book being beaten over the head with Cordelia telling us how meticulous and careful and good at killing she is, and then the rest of the book she's stumbling around barely able to cover up the murder she impulsively committed (as opposed to the ones she carefully planned out). I could have forgiven that as a side effect of her being off her game, but I did get the vibe that I was supposed to think that all the bad decisions she was making were a sign of her meticulous planning and it was just other people getting in the way of it, rather than a fundamental flaw with the whole plan.

But really the biggest crime is everything with Simon, her best friend's boyfriend. Cordelia meets him and is immediately under the impression that he's a bad guy. He's a bad man and shouldn't date her best friend. And he is a bit of a creep--he's possessive and controlling, but so is Cordelia. And one of the first things you find out about her is that she's a control freak with a temper and has driven off all of her best friend's boyfriends! So when she kills him on impulse and was desperately trying to convince herself that he was actually a monster who deserved it I was like yes! yes! She's going to have to deal with the fact that she killed someone who maybe didn't "deserve" it! And we'll dig more into her negative traits and how they damage or affect others around her! BUT THEN A PAGE LATER SHE FINDS PHOTOS IN HIS PHONE THAT CONFIRM HE WAS A PREDATOR????? Which killed the rest of the book for me tbh, but I shouldn't have been surprised because two things we find out about Cordelia (and this world as a whole) is that a) only men are predators and women are perpetual victims and b) Cordelia can simply tell when men are horrible evil bad people she should kill for the betterment of everyone else.

There was also an absolutely laughable line where she says she "unlearned internalized toxic misogyny" which essentially means that she's a girly girl now and hates her past self who was a huge loser and pathetic or whatever and now every single woman she doesn't like (or that is just poorer than her) is an ugly redneck loser who is vapid and only wants designer bags, as if Cordelia herself isn't so shallow that she name drops every brand name in existence.

This book set itself up to have something interesting to say and explore and then completely dropped the ball at the halfway point because the author had no interest in anything other than making Cordelia a hashtag girlboss girl's girl with a ride or die bestie who was also way too chill with helping her best friend hide her boyfriend's body after finding his head in Cordelia's fridge. Also why did Cordelia leave it unwrapped? Why did she let her best friend help dispose of the body when the entire rest of the book she was desperately trying to keep her from getting involved? Who knows! I certainly don't and I'm not sure Wells does either outside of "ride or die best friends".