Published By: Viper
Pages: 352
Released On: 06/08/2026
What use is a part-time serial killer who doesn’t want to kill people? Once the terror of rude and irritating people everywhere, now Claire has lost her murderous mojo. Not even the overly chatty woman in the supermarket or the man who stole her neighbour’s dog can motivate her to get out the zip ties.
Then a lucky break and a new job in the local pub gives Claire the perfect target: someone is spiking drinks and causing mayhem. But as Claire closes in on the culprit, punters start dropping like flies – and for once she’s not the one doing the killing. Is someone else murdering on her patch? Claire has questions. And she’s not afraid to use her hammer to get answers…
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Viper for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
This is the second of Joanna’s books for me – I read The Dead Friend Project, and I have a copy of You’d Look Better as a Ghost which I haven’t read yet. And even after just one book she has become an author I look out for for funny and bloody thrillers and I highly recommend her.
This one is less murder and more chat, which is fine as that’s what it says in the synopsis, but I would have liked a bit more murder – because I’m weird like that. Or maybe it’s not that. I think it might be because the murdery bits don’t really kick in until the second half and that made the first half feel rather slow.
It is surprisingly funny and felt more personable; we spent more time with Claire and got to know her as a person before knowing her as the murderer.
Now, this is a sequel to You’d Look Better as a Ghost, which as stated above, is the one book of hers I haven’t read, which is a bit annoying as I didn’t know this was a sequel. Now I can’t say whether I missed anything obviously, because I’m not aware of what I could miss. But I never felt like I was at too much of a disadvantage reading it. But I’m sure there will be aspects of it or characters that are familiar to readers who have read the first one.
There are quite a lot of characters in this one and I’m not great at keeping on top of names, but I know that’s a me problem rather than a problem with the book itself. But they did feel distinct enough and interesting to read about.
I definitely preferred The Dead Friend Project to this and it does have some flaws, in my opinion, but I still really enjoyed it. She’s got this talent for writing recognisable characters, giving us blood and murder and thrill, whilst keeping it humerous and lighthearted.
The genre of dark-humour-female-serial-killer is a saturated one at the moment and whilst I did enjoy this, I’m not sure it would stand out currently. But I will definitely find that copy of the first book and maybe once I’ve read that I may return to this one to see if I get any more out of it.
Books By Your Bedside 