Kiss, Marry, Kill is a rather intriguing thriller by British author, Laura Marshall, who has written several best-selling novels and whose 2024 book A Good Place to Hide a Body was shortlisted for the CWA Whodunnit Dagger Award.
We are in the world of online dating, where we meet three middle-aged friends: happily married Angela, who runs a dating agency called: ‘Kiss, Marry, Avoid’; widowed (and very wealthy) Sara, who is at long last testing the waters by going to a speed dating event; and Helen, who lives with her domineering husband, Brian, and hides a big secret.
Sara meets and falls hard for Nigel, a seemingly wealthy businessman who also falls for her. To Angela’s horror, Sara hurries into a relationship with him and, before you can blink, they’ve moved in together and are engaged to be married.
After a while Angela and Sara begin to realise that there’s something amiss with Helen and her relationship with her husband. The first couple of times when they confront her with their suspicions, she dismisses them. But we, the reader, get a different story through her thoughts and actions at home, and we realise that Brian isn’t just domineering, but an outright bully and abuser.
Eventually Helen wakes up to the fact that she has to get out before he escalates and kills her. The friends come to the house to help her escape, only for Brian to turn up unexpectedly. In the ensuing scuffle Helen hits Brian with a golf trophy and he collapses, severely injured and on the point of death.
From then on, the story goes down a pretty dark path, as the three friends try to concoct a story that will explain and get Helen off the inevitable police investigation. At the same time Sara finds that the wonderful Nigel, who to the reader seemed too good to be true, was exactly that – a swindler and a conman.
My verdict
This is a great story – highly satisfying to read, and in places amusing and somewhat morally ambiguous. But as the tagline says, ‘some people really do have it coming’, which doesn’t just refer to Brian – who eventually comes out of his coma more repugnant than ever – but also to Nigel, the conman.
It’s also well written, with believable characters – both the good and the bad. Laura Marshall has done a particularly good job of depicting Brian as over-the-top nasty, but then most abusers are just that, only hidden behind closed doors. Sometimes, the descriptions of both his physical and emotional mistreatment of Helen are almost too vivid.
Helen is very well drawn. In the beginning her fussy behaviour around Brian irritates her friends and makes them pity her poor husband, until they realise that this behaviour is her way of pouring oil on the waters of his simmering rage. And although she commits a crime and might be considered a ‘Bad ‘un’ I couldn’t help rooting for her. (I told you it was morally ambiguous!) The other two women are also vivid. The naïve and trusting Sara, and Angela, who is the only one among them who is actually a completely normal woman in a completely normal relationship.
The police feature very little in the narrative, although the reader is very aware they are there and just waiting for Helen take a wrong step. Towards the end of the novel there is a hugely satisfying scene where the two horrible men get their comeuppance; and then, at the very end, there’s an unexpected and wonderful twist.
I borrowed Kiss, Marry, Kill from Oundle Library, and it was a really good read that I recommend. So much so, in fact, that I give it 4+ Stars.
Review by: Freyja
What’s in a Star?
At Oundle Crime, a 5-Star rating means a novel that’s “outstanding and unforgettable. A book you can’t wait to tell others about.” And 4-Stars is “A good book with an interesting, layered story that you will still remember after a month.”
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