Honey by Imani Thompson

TL;DR: A woman’s slow descent into killing, this was wild. Source: NetGalley, thank you so much to the publisher!

Plot: Yrsa is bored with life. Till she finds exacting death fulfilling.
Characters: These are all fairly flawed and fascinating characters. Yrsa herself was a great PoV for the story.
Setting: Not the strongest part of the story, but the college setting did lend some color to the story.
Horror: The deaths were intense, and the slow ‘wtf’ was great. The tension on this was masterfully done.

Summary:

Yrsa is in a funk. She’s bored of her PhD program, bored of her research on Afropessimism, bored of the entitled undergrads she has to cater to. But most of all, she’s bored of the men in her life—especially the bad ones.

When her best friend, Nina, confesses to having an affair with her professor, and that he’s stolen her research, Yrsa is mad. On the quad, Yrsa bumps into the professor and witnesses his death: an unfortunate incident involving his San Pellegrino and a bee allergy. What she sees that afternoon awakens something in her: a taste for murder.

Emboldened, Yrsa decides to chase that high, and soon, no sexist, misbehaving man within commuting distance is safe.

With each murder, Yrsa feels a greater sense of meaning and purpose—finally, her doctoral research feels useful. But how long can killing in the name of feminist and racial solidarity justify her actions? Will her rampage ever assuage her feelings of rage and revenge? And how long until her actions—and buried family secrets—come back to haunt her?

Thoughts:

Honey was one of those slow, sneaky surprise books. Yrsa’s slow descent into a mild form (if you can call any form of it mild) madness and murder was such a ride. The book caught me with it’s writing style, it’s blunt but engaging. It’s fast paced and you never really know what to expect next. The story seems simple – bored woman takes up murder, but there is so much more there.

Yrsa feels believable, which I know sounds wild. But for a main character going to such wild ends I can almost empathize. She felt real, she was written so well. Even if we’d stopped at one death and the rest of the book had simply followed Yrsa I think I would have still been caught and trapped.

This is a great, slow, moody read I can’t recommend enough. If you like women coming out on top, taking revenge, or femme rage – this is a read you have to try. There is some things to take care with, racism, sexism, violence, etc. But on the whole this one was fantastic.