“What if the only way to bury the truth is to bury your husband?
The first attempt at killing her husband was the night of the dinner party.
After forty years, Thom Graves has become an incredible disappointment to his wife, Wendy – he drinks too much, flirts with other women, and worst of all, is in danger of revealing their dark secret. But how far is Wendy willing to go to stop him?
Starting at the end, and ending at the beginning, Kill Your Darlings is an ingenious mystery about two people’s life together, and the secrets which fatally bind them.”
Hello and welcome to damppebbles. Today I am delighted to share my review of Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson. Kill Your Darlings was published by Faber & Faber on 3rd July 2025 and is available in hardcover, audio and digital formats. I chose to read a free eARC of Kill Your Darlings but that has in no way influenced my review.
I have been a fan of Peter Swanson’s dark and twisty thrillers for such a long time now. It all started with The Kind Worth Killing (read pre-blog) and has snowballed since then. He’s one of a small number of authors whose books I buy without even reading the synopsis. I always look forward to the publication of Swanson’s next book (because I’ve read everything he’s written to date!). His thrillers have strong characters, shedloads of suspense, twists and turns galore and are nigh on impossible to put down. A new book by this author is one of the main highlights of my year.
Kill Your Darlings is unlike anything I’ve read before. The presentation of the story is quite different, but the characters, plot and building intrigue all have Swanson’s distinctive style. This is, without a doubt, a Peter Swanson book, but a Peter Swanson book with a difference. A difference I was very much intrigued by. If you’re a regular visitor to the blog, you may be aware that I’m very much a character-focussed reader. I like my characters to have depth, layers and ultimately, to be believable. I don’t necessarily need to like or warm to them, but I need to feel *something* (loathing, despair, anger – all good!). One of the things this author does particularly well, in my opinion, is to write fascinating characters. Characters you become invested in. You want to see how things will turn out. Which is what happened with Wendy and Thom Graves from the moment I met them.
Wendy and Thom met on a school trip to Washington in 1982. Now, many years later, Wendy has pretty much had enough of her husband. She sees his flaws for what they are. Truth be told, the rose-tinted spectacles slipped many years ago. Plus, with Thom’s excessive drinking, there is every chance he’s going to say the wrong thing to the wrong person and ruin both their lives. Because Wendy and Thom have a secret. A secret that could destroy everything. So Wendy has decided to kill her husband. No hard feelings, eh Thom? It’s just something she has to do to save herself. After all, how hard can it be to kill an ageing drunk? Certainly harder than Wendy thinks…
Kill Your Darlings turns the domestic thriller on its head by starting in the present day and working its way back in time to the day Wendy and Thom met as teenagers. It’s a clever and intriguing way of telling the Graves’ tale. Keeping the reader engaged from the get-go, with intrigue building over the course of the book, ensuring the reader keeps turning the pages. This isn’t a story you can put down and walk away from. You become strangely invested in the couple, in their fate, in how they got to this devastating point in their lives. Where did it all go wrong? Or has it never actually been ‘right’? It’s an intriguing, fascinating premise which Swanson has handled with great skill.
Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. Kill Your Darlings is a unique tale with such an intriguing, compelling premise. There is always something happening, but overall, the pace is more sedate than Swanson’s earlier novels. Not really a problem for me as I don’t mind a gentler paced book, providing the characters are keeping my interest, and in Kill Your Darlings they certainly did! The layers of this unhappy marriage are stripped away, taking us to the withered heart of a couple held together by a devastating secret. How did they get to the incomprehensible point where murder seems to be the only option? Why does Thom drink so much that he struggles to remember? How did it all go so, so wrong? All in all, a highly intriguing tale from a master storyteller. Peter Swanson remains one of my favourite authors, and I cannot wait to see what he has in store for us next. Clever, inventive and entertaining from start to finish. Recommended.
I chose to read and review a free eARC of Kill Your Darlings. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.
Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson was published in the UK by Faber & Faber on 3rd July 2025 and is available in hardcover, audio and digital formats (please note, the following links are affiliate links which means I receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no extra cost to you): | amazon.co.uk | Waterstones | bookshop.org | Goodreads | damppebbles bookshop.org shop | damppebbles amazon.co.uk shop | damppebbles amazon.com shop |
Peter is the Sunday Times and New York Times best selling author of 11 novels, including The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award, and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year. His books have been translated into over 30 languages, and his stories, poetry, and features have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Atlantic Monthly, Measure, The Guardian, The Strand Magazine, and Yankee Magazine.
A graduate of Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emerson College, he lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts with his wife.
