That women can kill for fun, due to boredom or as a revenge, or all at once, it is no scientific wonder. Women can be as good or as bad as the male counter-parts and there is no need of feminist revolution or revelation to acknowledge that. But...it doesn´t mean that one gender or the other is supposed to enjoy a priviledge to kill. In real or literary life. Or that just killing is enough to make life more enjoyable.
Yrsa, the main character of Honey, the debut roman by Imani Thompson everyone is talking about, is initially starting to kill men for the sake of testing her PhD premises. She is a young Black woman, from a middle class family, studying to Cambridge, enjoying brunch with her girlfriends, no pressure to work menial jobs. Some of the men she is killing are exes, men who disappointed her or someone else, random dates.
As an avid crime reader I would have expected some extra details about really preparing the crimes, and how she fails by being considered a main suspect. The writing flows, with some ideological intersectional snippets I may happen to feel where they are leading, but which I refuse to accept, from a simple non-ideological point of view. Three years and I am sick to my stomach to digest the idea of ´those who we think are oppressors, are the legitimate tarket of individual violence´. IYKYK.
Seven years ago I´ve read My Sister, the Serial Killer and loved it for the sake of the story, without any ideological embellishments. This is how I love my fiction.
PS: The cover is from the German edition of the book, and although I´ve read the book in the original English, I couldn´t resist to use this deliciously decadent image.
Rating: 2.5 stars

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