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June 27, 2025

Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson ~ a Review

by Donna Huber


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.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

book cover of mystery novel Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson
June 2025; William Morrow; 978-0063433625
audio, ebook, print (288 pages); mystery

Last Christmas, I discovered a Christmas short story written by Peter Swanson. The waitlist was a mile long, and I knew I wouldn't ever get to listen to the audiobook over Christmas (even though it is only a 3-hour book). I hadn't read anything by Swanson, but I figured if that many people were waiting on the book, then he was worth trying. Kill Your Darlings is Swanson's latest novel, and I decided to give it a try.

The premise was interesting. If you are a writer, you may have heard the advice, kill your darlings. These are things that you love about your story, but don't really serve the novel. And both Wendy and Thom are writers. Wendy has published a book of poetry, and Thom is an English professor who is forever working on a novel. So the title piqued my interest given the plot summary mentions that Wendy wants to murder her husband! Is she literally killing her darling?

The story is told in reverse order, with each chapter jumping back in time in various chunks of time (sometimes a year or two, and others 5 or more years). I'm not sure I liked this method of storytelling. Small pieces are shared in each time jump which gives you clues as to why Wendy wants to kill her darling Thom. But I found some of it boring. There didn't seem to be any tension in the story. I loved the bombshell reveal at the very end. If it had been revealed first (if the story had been played in a traditional chronological order) then it wouldn't have been as shocking.

I did not connect with the characters, which is another reason this book felt a little blah to me. I didn't really care about them so I didn't care for a lot of what was going on in their lives.

Swanson was good at connecting the dots between what happened in the present with the events in the past that led to those actions. 

I still want to read his Christmas book, and if you want a mystery that isn't written in the traditional manner, then you should give this one a chance.

Buy Kill Your Darlings at Amazon


Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.



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