REVIEW: You Killed Me First by John Marrs
Book #51 of 2025, done!
📖 BOOK: You Killed Me First by John Marrs
🎧 FORMAT: Audiobook via Audible
📚 GENRE: Psychological Thriller
📅 RELEASED: 2024
⏱️ AUDIOBOOK LENGTH: 10 hours, 2 minutes (listened at 1.7x)
⭐ RATING: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5 stars)
👉 PURCHASE: Via this link (Audible is having a HUGE sale right now. Ends 6/6/25 I believe)
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🧳 SYNOPSIS:
”Three women. Three smoldering secrets. Who will make it out alive?
It’s November 5th, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in - she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this?
Rewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV start, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move onto their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretense of a friendship, and each harbors her own deadly secret - and newcomer Liz senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exterors.
As cracks widen in the veneer of perfection and lies escalate out of control, tensions ignite. Bonfire Night is approaching and someone is set to burn…but who will it be?”
💬 THE VIBE:
Dark, and twisty. Feels like Black Mirror meets Gone Girl, but with a bit less punch.
💡 STANDOUT ELEMENTS:
The shifting perspectives kept things moving but also, confusing
A revenge plot that flips the script
Fast-paced and bingeable if you're in the mood for some mild chaos
🧠 WHAT STUCK:
The idea of moral ambiguity in justice
How far someone will go when they feel wronged
That low-key anxiety you get from reading about people being trapped ( hello claustrophobia!)
👎 WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:
Some of the twists felt predictable
Characters weren’t especially deep or memorable, and found myself getting them confused with each other
🤔 IF YOU LIKE:
Revenge-driven thrillers
Books that feel like limited TV series episodes
🙅♀️ IF YOU DON’T LIKE:
Shallow characters
Stories that wrap up too neatly
Violence without emotional depth
📝 FINAL VERDICT:
3 stars.
I love John Marrs’ writing…his dystopian series (The One series) absolutely hooked me and set the bar sky-high. But the standalone books I’ve read outside of that world, including this one, just haven’t quite lived up to those expectations (yet). You Killed Me First was entertaining enough to finish, but didn’t pack the same punch or originality. Still, if you want a twisty revenge story you can cruise through, this will do the trick.
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