Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson | Audiobook Review

This one frustrated me a little.

Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson

Released August 2022

Source: Borrowed from Library

Goodreads  | Amazon

Turns out that reading nothing but true crime isn’t exactly conducive to modern dating—and one woman is going to have to learn how to give love a chance when she’s used to suspecting the worst.

PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She’s even analyzing the genre in her dissertation—if she can manage to finish writing it. It’s hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn’t had a relationship with for years.

It doesn’t help that she’s low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer (he may dress business casual by day, but at night he’s clearly up to something). It’s not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier—a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

My 2 Cents for Free!

This book has nothing to do with serial killers if you were wondering. The heroine has an obsession with them and is working on a dissertation about them and we hear about that a bit but after an initial meet creepy between Phoebe and her cute neighbor Sam, there is no serial killing happening. No murder mystery, no suspected murder, no murder in her past, no dog digging up an ancient femur. What kind of trickery is this?! This is a straight-up contemporary romance not that there's anything wrong with that but the title implies something else . . .

Anyhow, it's about Phoebe whose estranged father has recently passed (through no nefarious means so don't get too excited) and she's shown up at his Florida home to help clean out his house with her younger brother who she doesn't know very well. They're 6 or 7 years apart and she was raised by her mother after the divorce. Phoebe keeps everyone at arm's length and plans to keep it that way but she meets Sam (the next-door neighbor) and her guard starts to crack a bit.

Phoebe is a loner and she's prickly - she even describes herself this way here. I don't mind a prickly character but her attitude really wore on me after a while and I didn't find it amusing, endearing or relatable - it just aggravated me and I truly began to wonder why Sam wanted anything to do with her and that's not a good thing when I'm reading something that's supposed to be a romantic comedy. It might've worked better if she had actually had some serial killing in her history or something to make it make more sense. 🙃 Or maybe I just read too much horror. Phoebe has a lot of personal growth to do and she does do it eventually but getting there was truly a testament to my patience, tbh. This is a book I should've quit at about the halfway mark but I kept going like the fool I am.

I liked Sam and the brother and all the other people but we are in Phoebe's head for the duration and I didn't like being there most of the time. She made me as grouchy as she was sometimes for too much of the book. The narrator was excellent though. I probably wouldn't have finished it otherwise. Other people seem to find it amusing and romantic and it was at times but it was also so frustrating too many other times . . .

⭐⭐1/2

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