Kill For Me, Kill For You by Steve Cavanagh

Hello Beautiful People! Welcome back to a new review! For this review I get into Kill For Me, Kill For You by Steve Cavanagh. A twisty thriller focusing around the desperate needs of two different women connected by their trauma, if you enjoyed The Collective by Alison Gaylin you would also probably enjoy this read as well!

Main Characters:

Amanda: A grieving mother who, after losing her young daughter Jess to a horrifying murder, is struggling with her pain and the lack of answers for her daughter’s death. Amanda feels like the system has not provided her family the justice they deserve, and works to find a way to enact it herself

Wendy: Like Amanda is struggling through the grief of the loss of her young daughter, who met an end like Amanda’s did in horrifying ways, the women connect through their grief and begin a plan to work to find justice in ways others aren’t providing

Ruth and Scott: A couple who become involved in Amanda and Wendy’s plan when Ruth is attacked by a man who may be involved.

Detective Farrow: The detective working on the cases involving Amanda and Wendy’s children

My Review

Overall, I enjoyed Kill For Me, Kill For You by Steve Cavanagh and found the plot to be an interesting one. A factor about the book, though, is that there are a lot of moving parts, so you have to pay attention to try and keep up with all the different things and people that show themselves throughout the book to know what’s going on. I’ll be honest that I got lost a few times, but eventually everything comes together to finish the book off with a shattering reveal. I gave Kill For Me, Kill For You by Steve Cavanagh a 7/10 rating; it’s definitely one to add to the list if you like a twisty thriller.

Kill For Me, Kill For You follows Amanda and Wendy, two women who cross paths at a trauma group and become intertwined in each other’s lives in ways they could have never imagined. Connected by their unimaginable grief and pain, the two devise a plan to bring justice to each other in ways that the police never could. The plan? To kill the men that killed their young daughters, for one another. A murder swap plan, if you will, so that both women can get their justice and avoid jail time. While both women are on board with the plan, when the man that Amanda believes killed her daughter shows up dead, she loses her strength in the plan, and soon comes to see that there may have been more to Wendy and her desires than she could have ever believed. Ruth and Scott are a young couple seemingly disconnected from Wendy and Amada, who have their whole world changed when Ruth is attacked in their home, and Scott is forced to take measures to protect her that will change him forever. Only remembering the dynamic blue eyes of the man that attacked her, Ruth is haunted by the why of it all, while Scott is forced to look at his humanity and how far he will go to take care of the people he loves. The two plots come together in the book, but do act disconnected for much of the book.

Okay, so this one had me hooked fast. I was quickly pulled in by the earth-shattering grief of the characters and the lack of justice they had received for the horrible things that had happened to them. I wish, however, that the book matched the pace through the rest of the book and found that it was a big dump and then a slow descent to the end. It didn’t take away from the book at all, but was just something I noticed while checking it out. While the pace for the book isn’t as fast as it may be called for, it starts off with a punchy premise, a murder swap à la Strangers on a Train, and dives straight into the spine-tingling topics. If you’re into twisty thrillers that keep you on your toes, this one’s got plenty of surprises to throw your way. And yes, that big twist at the end? I absolutely did not see it coming. When it was exposed, I did feel a bit silly because, all in all, there weren’t many ways for the end of the book to go, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless.

Like I was saying before, though, it wasn’t a perfect ride all the way through. There were moments where I had to pause and go, “Wait, what is happening?”—especially when it came to how everything connected. The attack on Ruth, for example, felt a little too vague at first, and I spent a good chunk of time trying to figure out how it tied into the larger story. I got there eventually, but it could’ve been clearer. I thought for most of the book that the Ruth an Scott stuff was a sub plot or a filler to just kind of take up space in the book that would eventually connect in some way, but it does end up playing a much larger roll in the book so its worth it to work through those parts to reach the end.

Amanda was such an interesting character, but I honestly found her hard to connect with. She lives fully in her own world and doesn’t seem to care much about collateral damage, which makes her compelling but kind of cold. I get that that was the point, but still, I wanted something more human from her. Now, to be fair, yes, she was approached with a crazy plot and overall makes better choices than Wendy, but Wendy was also driven and clear in what she wanted, which at first seemed like the same thing as Amanda. I just felt myself rolling my eyes when Amanda gets herself so deep into this all and then wants to sit back and think about things and question if she is making the right choices. Even though maybe Wendy was more intense than her, it doesn’t make Amanda any better than her, though, and if anything, Amanda could have just cleaned her hands and moved on – but no, she needs to get herself into more things and more issues. Maybe that’s just me being judgmental, though, but I just wanted to scream at her sometimes as to why she made the choices she did.

Also… can we talk about the whole blue eyes thing? That detail carried way too much weight for how small and strange it was. I get what the book was trying to do, but it felt a bit thin for such a major plot point. Overall though? It’s a solid, satisfying read with smart twists, layered characters, and a plot that keeps you flipping pages. If the pacing had kept up with the intensity of the premise, it could’ve easily pushed into 8 or 9 territory for me.

*** Don’t keep reading if you don’t want the ending spoiled ***

So the book ends with the reader discovering that the Ruth and Scott parts of the book are not in the present with Amanda and Wendy, it’s in the past.

When Ruth is attacked and Scott kills the man who did it (or thought he did it), he then kills himself out of shame for what he did. I mean to be fair, though it was kind of Ruth’s fault, but he didn’t need to do all of that for sure. Ruth vows to kill every man who reminds her of the man who attacked her, and the man she blames for ruining her life and leading to the death of her husband.

Wendy was never really Wendy; it was Ruth. Ruth, since her husband’s death, has been going around and creating murder plots with people so that they would kill men that she wants dead, and then doesn’t kill the men that she says she will. When Wendy tells Amanda that she killed the man responsible for the death of her daughter, she attempts to kill the man Wendy asked her to kill. She ends up not going through with it and only hurting him, only to find out the man she believes killed her daughter isn’t really dead, and Wendy has dropped off the face of the earth. When another person, Billy, finds Amanda to tell her who Wendy really is, the two are dragged into a vast amount of secrets and betrayal at the hands of Wendy, aka Ruth.

It gets double-exposed at the end that Billy is the one who attacked Ruth all those years ago, and I guess was trying to stop what he started? I don’t know that was never really explained well. He does kill the man that Amanda thought killed her daughter for her, as like a gift, I guess, for helping him stop Ruth.

I think that if they had just ended it at the whole Ruth getting arrested thing, that would have been good enough. I mean, the ending wasn’t bad at all, it was just a lot to process, given everything we went through to get to this point.

I hope you enjoyed this review, and thank you for checking it out! Feel free to sign up for the email list at the bottom of the page to be the first to know when I release a new review!