Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson is an ambitious and bold attempt at cleverly structuring a psychological thriller in reverse. As we journey backward in this reverse storytelling format, we are challenged to piece together a marriage fraught with turmoil and bound by a chilling secret.
Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well…except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.
What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives—their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason’s birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague—all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.
Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.
Peter Swanson is a true master of storytelling and many times has a bold way of telling said stories. The unique structure of Kill Your Darlings—a narrative told in reverse chronological order–is what will draw many readers in, but seems like a fun way of reading a story turns out to be a slow burn that I found difficult to sink into. The reverse storytelling technique is both intriguing and challenging; it demanded too much patience to fully appreciate how past events culminate into present tensions.
The storytelling structure is a clever way to hook the reader, that is for sure. And while telling the story in reverse is compelling, the ending doesn’t quite fit with the journey we are on. Once we get to the conclusion, it felt less of a shocking moment and more of a substantiation of what we expect to happen. Additionally, at the heart of Kill Your Darlings is a character study of a marriage, which is as depressing as it sounds.
Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson has a compelling premise with a fun and unique story structure. Despite these things, the dark and atmospheric tale was a little hard to follow and didn’t live up to my expectation (which could be my own fault). Swanson is one of my all-time favorite authors and this won’t change–even if Kill Your Darlings just wasn’t for me.
Kill Your Darlings hits bookstores everywhere on June 10, 2025 from William Morrow. You can pre-order the audiobook at Libro.fm!
