You Owe Me a Better Ending: My Review if You Owe Me a Murder by Eileen Cook

First, thank you Net Galley for the ARC of this book I was given in exchange for a fair and honest review.

So, it finally happened. I’ve started missing the protagonist you’re meant to hate trend. That’s largely because hating a protagonist is much better than having no feelings at all, especially when the reason is that the character is incredibly blah. It’s not that Kim, our main character, was stupid (she was) or hopelessly clingy (she was that, too); the problem with her character was that she simply wasn’t interesting. It wasn’t compelling to be inside her head; she wasted so much time being mopey over a boy she’d just met (right after the last guy she was hung up on had been murdered in front of her). And can I just say, I even kind of get that; I was boy crazy at her age. It’s just such a leap that she goes from being so hung up on Connor to being so Gaga over Alex that she can’t stop moping around even while trying to solve her problem.

Nicki is far more interesting, but even she is kind of cheated on the end. I won’t give a real spoiler because what’s the point in reading a review if you aren’t going to read the book, but I’m not really sure about how they reduce her whole story to a girl being salty over a guy. It’s a little insulting that the book boils down to two supposedly smart women being completely willing to implode their whole lies because what? They were scorned in love? Nope, not a fan.

I did like Alex, though. Yes, I get the slight irony of me being angry at these two characters for letting a boy be the center of their world when a boy was my favorite part of the book, but I can’t help it. He was so sweet and endearing....although his character, too, was flawed. There was all this commentary about him being a needy homeschooled boy and being so awkward, but he was actually a pretty smooth operator. He wooed Kim straight out the gate and always knew exactly what to say. It felt very much like that thing where people pretend to be geeks because geek is chic now and I’m not really here for it.

It kind of bums me out how easy the ending was because I think the concept was really cool. The idea that human beings can be capable of so much more ugliness than we give them credit for was one that could have been so much more flushed out if the characters were more compelling. They just didn’t Have the psychological depth for this storyline.



3/5 stars. Not a hard pass, but you could miss it.