You'd Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace
Published by Penguin
Publication date: September 21, 2023
Genres: Debut, Fiction, Mystery
Bookshop
When You’d Look Better as a Ghost opens Claire has just found out that a piece of her art has been accepted for a prestigious show. It’s only the next day that she gets another email from the same person letting her know he made a mistake and it’s another woman named Claire who got in. Crushing news for any aspiring artist but these things happen, right? Yes, but not to Claire. She researches the man online, finds him, lures him to her apartment, and kills him.
This is how Claire deals with people she believes have behaved badly enough to her or those she loves to deserve it. Which is a very broad category for her. Prior to the unfortunate art man, it was a nurse’s aide at her father’s facility who abused him. She’s gone decades exacting her own vengeance, but now she starts hearing from someone saying they know what she’s done and unless she meets their demands they’ll go to the police. The hunt is on. Can Claire figure out who is blackmailing her and silence them or is the bill for her years of killing finally coming due.
I’m going to stop there because everything else is a spoiler, but You’d Look Better as a Ghost is all kinds of awesome. First of all, Claire is darkly hilarious. She finds the majority of humanity to be deeply problematic. I’m not quite that misanthropic, but I found much of her inner dialogue about her fellow humans to be witty and relatable.
This kind of novel could lose its balance so easily, but author Joanna Wallace is not only razor sharp with her prose she executes the details of this extremely twisty tale with style. Did it teeter on the edge of too much plot? Yes, which is why I gave it 4.5 stars not 5. However, right up until the last page when it seems as if all is resolved Wallace sticks the landing with a perfect final sentence. A serial killer makes for a shocking narrator, but the macabre humor makes You’d Look Better as a Ghost wickedly wonderful.
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Yassss.
Thank you, queen, I never would have known about it if not for you.
This sounds so good! Going to check if Libby has the audiobook!
It’s really dark, but I guess so am I because I loved it.