Will I Like This Book? – This Book Kills by Ravena Guron

I wrote about going to YALC last week, and one of the opportunities this afforded me was to gather up so many book samplers. I don’t pick up samplers in book shops too often, so it was nice to get the opportunity to preview a few more books.

One of the samplers I picked up was for Usborne. It wasn’t a big sampler, and there were previews for a few different books. The one that interested me the most is the one I’m going to talk about today.

This Book Kills is a YA thriller coming out in January 2023. It’s UKYA, something that I know I do not read enough of. In this book, we follow Jess, a scholarship student who winds up the focus of an investigation when a popular boy from her school winds up dead. Killed in the exact way a character in her short story was. When she receives a mysterious text thanking her for the inspiration, Jess knows she’ll have to solve this mystery soon. If not, she could wind up dead too.

There wasn’t much I could gather from such a short sample, but I know that I want to read on. The writing style was quite chatty, something that I often enjoy. It always helps a book feel character-driven, and I think it’ll be pretty fun.

The thing with this sample is that it starts before the murder. You see one of the reasons someone might want to kill Hugh, but not how. And I really want to know how he dies. I don’t know if that’s the majority of my intrigue right now, but I definitely wanted to read on.

This book reads like a younger YA novel. That’s not a bad thing, I always have a good time with it, even if I don’t pick them up as often. I’m definitely curious as to whether the tone will change when the murder happens or not, as this book could turn out to be pretty dark.

Final thoughts? I’m reading more and more YA mysteries and thrillers. I’ve read adult books with a similar plotline before and loved them. I’m excited to see what this teen version set in the UK is going to be like.

I can say for certain that I’ll be picking up this book when it comes out next year!