Book Review: I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells

My rating: 3.75/5

From Amazon: "John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it. Obsessed with serial killers, he never wants to be one. Yet terrible impulses constantly tempt him.

"Having grown up helping his mom at the family mortuary, dead bodies are no big deal to John. He likes them, actually. They don’t ask for the empathy he’s unable to offer. Perhaps that’s what gives him the clarity to recognize that something is frighteningly different about the freshest body on the slab. 
For the first time, John must confront a danger outside his own mind, a threat he cannot control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could."

Though it was the first book that I've finished in under 2 weeks in a very long time, it could have been so much better. In fact I really wish I didn't have the complaints that I do. 

First off, I'm going to spoil something for you because, I believe, it might actually make you like the book more if you decide to read it.  I felt duped when it happened, because it turned out to not be the type of book I thought I was reading.  So....

***************SPOILER ALERRRRRRRRRT*******************

....this book has a huge supernatural element to it.  That's all I'll say; I won't ruin more than that.  And don't get me wrong, I love supernatural stories.  But I wasn't out to read a supernatural story; I wanted to read about a sociopathic teenager.  Which I still did, and it was mostly well written, incredibly interesting, and very engaging.  But the supernatural bent really got my knickers in a twist when it came out of the blue like that. I was surprised, but not in a good way; it seemed like the author thought we wouldn't read it if we knew it was supernatural, so he just left that out of the blurb.  Or, he thought we'd appreciate the shock.  But again, I just felt tricked.

Once I got past that though, I thought all of the characters were incredibly realistic. The John, his family, his therapist, the villain, everyone.  I love it when an author knows his characters, and this author definitely does.

And the story is usually, though supernatural, believable.  However, there are moments that seem to defy logic.  Without spoiling anything else, I'll say that more people should have been suspicious of the sociopath teenager than were, especially after some of the actions he took.  (How's that for vague?)  It was enough that at moments, I was taken out of the story and giving the pages a look of disbelief.  Which was especially disappointing because the book was otherwise so absorbing.

This book is one of three books in a series (John Cleaver series), but at this point I probably won't read the others.  I may at a later date, but I was irked just enough by this one to kill any eagerness I might've had to immediately read the rest.