Kill Your Darlings

A Novel

De: Peter Swanson

Narrado por: Steven Weber

“A dazzlingly clever murder mystery, told backwards, asking the question: why would this loving wife murder her husband?”—Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Famous Last Words and Wrong Place Wrong Time

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Kind Worth Killing and Eight Perfect Murders comes an inventive, utterly propulsive murder-mystery in reverse, tracing a marriage back in time to uncover the dark secret at its heart.

Audiobook narrated by Steven Weber!

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.

What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives—their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason’s birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague—all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.

Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.

Peter Swanson is a great story teller

I really liked this book. I wish it was longer and I didn’t love the ending but such a good listen

I liked it.

After I finished I found myself wanting to go back to the beginning to remind myself of how it all began. It's strange listening to the story in reverse. I enjoyed the book, but found myself wishing for more. More of a twist, more of a mystery, just a bit more of something. I did like it though and it was worth a credit.

Loved

I am a very big fan of Peter Swanson and the performance of this book by Steven Webster is top notch. I went back after I finished this and re-listened to the start of it and I found that helped deepen the book for me. There are a lot of seeds planted but the reverse order of the timeline makes them a bit harder to catch, but once you see them, it's pretty great.

really well written and excellent narrator

I had to listen to the first few chapters again after finishing this one. I really enjoyed it!

The order of the chapters??

I am convinced that they messed up putting the chapters together. There were sections that repeated and the ending was so anticlimactic. It’s a shame, because the story would have been good otherwise.

Murder mystery kept me listening

Kill Your Darlings is a love/hate story which begins at its end and ends where it began. The audio performed by Stephen Weber is flawless. The murder mystery kept me listening.

Wendy and Tom met during their eighth grade trip to Washington D.C. bonding over their fascination with the Exorcist. Through the years their paths cross culminating in a secret they own and share. Wendy is a published poet who shares the tremendous inheritance received after her first husband’s death. Tom, an English Lit professor frustrated at trying to write the great American novel, cheats and drinks to excess. Wendy, fearing he might divulge their secret during one of his drunken affairs, has become disgusted with her husband.

A master storyteller, Swanson draws us in and the reader thinks the ending is obvious. It’s not and the last chapter is brilliantly executed.

I give this 5 stars. A psychological study in our relationships deteriorate.

Peeling back layers of marital deception in reverse choronological order

This is the second Peter Swanson book I've read, and I believe I'm starting to notice a pattern. The books aren't hard to follow, and I don't have a problem with the writing style. My issue with his work so far, is that I don't like the characters. The people he writes about aren't likeable. I'm willing to accept that it was the entire point for this particular novel, however.

My main attraction to this one was listening to Steven Weber narrate the audiobook. He's by far my favorite narrator and he once again is excellent in this.

The gimmick for this novel is that each chapter goes further back in time, and I call it a gimmick, because it honestly wasn't necessary in this one. I read another novel set up like that, and it was absolutely fascinating, and the narrative structure added so much more to the story, but here, it honestly didn't add that much for me, besides making the listener/reader feel they are peeling away the layers of deception with this couple like they're an onion.

There's a little twist at the end that feels relatively obvious, but gives the book a more satisfying ending than it seemed to be heading towards for the first 99% of it. I was just expecting more of a revelation that flipped the whole story on its head, and that never came. It all ended up being pretty straightforward, and it's primarily about a married couple that has some deadly secrets. It wasn't bad, honestly, but when I look back at all the books I've read this year, I don't think this one is going to stick out to me much.

I’m a big fan of Swanson

Interesting concept. Very well performed [and there’s that 15 word minimum again blah blah blah ].

Great writing, great premise, great narration.

Glad I came across an interview with this author on NPR. I’ll now read all his other works.

Unique

Peter Swanson is one of my favorite authors and I’ve loved all his books thus far. I gave this one 4 stars because it’s my least favorite, but it was still good, the performance was GREAT, and the ending was perfection. I definitely recommend.