Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson

e-ARC, 336 pages
Release Date: August 16, 2022
Published by: Jove Books
Read from: August 7-22, 2022
Stand-alone
Source: Edelweiss (I received a copy of this book from Edelweiss and the Publisher in exchange for a just and honest review. This did nothing to influence my review.)
TW: Serial Killer Talk
For Readers Interested In: True Crime, Contemporary Romance, Realistic Fiction, Adult

    Turns out that reading nothing but true crime isn’t exactly conducive to modern dating—and one woman is going to have to learn how to give love a chance when she’s used to suspecting the worst.
     PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She’s even analyzing the genre in her dissertation—if she can manage to finish writing it. It’s hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn’t had a relationship with for years.
     It doesn’t help that she’s low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer (he may dress business casual by day, but at night he’s clearly up to something). It’s not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier—a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

*MY THOUGHTS*

I didn’t need to know anything about this book to know that I needed to have it in my hands. Just the title itself is amazing. And then when I read the synopsis, I knew it was going to be a book for me. And listen, I was not wrong. I loved this book and I related to Phoebe and I loved it. Why weren’t more people talking about this before it came out? I didn’t find out about it until August….

Anyway, Phoebe is a quirky character who is getting her PhD in true crime as a genre. Well that’s the short version lol) This sounds like something straight out of my life. No I’m not working on my PhD, but true crime and books are like my second passion. It’s definitely something I could relate to. And then when she met Sam and was really stand-offish with him, I was the same with my husband. It wasn’t because I thought he was a serial killer, but more so because I thought I wasn’t going to be what he wanted. And man seeing that I wasn’t the only one that thought like that made me feel so much better. So basically what I’m saying is I related to her alot. It made the book a lot more fun. And man she was hilarious. With the way she was so awkward and weird with people, I definitely understood that as well. Well in layman terms, I really liked her lol

As for Sam, I LOVED that he was the complete opposite of her. He was a cinnamon roll and I loved how he made exceptions for her. He hated the darkness from true crime, but he was not going to not be there for her. I did like that Thompson had played on this tho. Like she showed he was an elementary teacher and she showed that he didn’t like the way she talked about books, and I really liked seeing the way they were different. This reminded me of my husband too lol He always gets mad at me and asks if I’ve been “watching death and murder” all day.

The plot was what made me not give this 5 stars tho. It didn’t seem like there was one. It was basically about her brother, and then her accepting that she liked him, and then finally them coming together. It just didn’t feel like it was actually going anywhere? I don’t know how to explain it. Like it was just things happening to her and there was no real direction? I’m probably butchering the explanation, but I don’t know how else to say it.

This could have been a five star read for me if there were some changes. But even without it, it was still a good read. I had a great time reading about Phoebe and I really hope to read more by Thompson later on. Definitely an author I want to check out more from. I hope she always has a random true crime element lol

Overall, I gave this