Meet Cordelia Black. Cordelia loves exactly three things: her chosen family composed of her best friend Diane and her goddaughter; her hairdresser (worth every penny plus tip); and killing bad men.

By day she’s a successful pharmaceutical rep with a pristine reputation and a designer wardrobe. By night she’s culling South Louisiana of unscrupulous men—monsters who always seem to evade justice, until they meet her. It’s a complicated yet fulfilling life that requires complete and total control at all times. But when the evening news starts throwing around the words “serial killer,” pressure heightens for her in the South, and it’s only exacerbated when Diane starts dating a man Cordelia isn’t sure is a good person—someone who might unravel everything Cordelia has worked for. Soon Cordelia’s world spirals, and she loses her grip on those tightly held threads that keep her safe.

I received an advance galley of this book courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

Over the past year, I have read more books about female serial killers than I think I ever have in my life. That’s not a complaint – I actually love it – but with the exception of CJ Leede’s “Maeve Fly” (still one of my all-time favorite books), there seems to be a formula that all authors follow, which makes these books predictable. That said, this book does have several familiar plot points, but I can honestly say that the last half of the book had me on the edge of my seat, and I couldn’t stop reading until I’d finished.

This novel focuses on Cordelia Black, a no-nonsense pharmaceutical rep with a penchant for fashion by day who is a ruthless vigilante serial killer by night. Like many female serial killer books, Cordelia enjoys ridding the world of evil men who prey on the innocent. She has a code (think “Dexter”), and she follows it to a “T,” but things get rocky when her best friend Diana starts dating an ER nurse named Simon. There’s something off about Simon, and Cordelia doesn’t trust him, but she can’t kill her best friend’s boyfriend based on a feeling – the code won’t let her. But as things begin to go south at work due to bad press around a drug Cordelia has been selling, and the media begin to focus on what they think may be the work of a local serial killer, Cordelia starts to feel the pressure. This culminates in Cordelia making a mistake one evening – something she has never done before – and this simple faux pas causes her carefully constructed world to begin to unravel.

While the author follows the familiar checklist of female serial killer books (no-nonsense, single woman hunting evil men, dates a cop, etc.), I was fully engaged and couldn’t wait to see how this one turned out – and a lot of that had to do with the fact that I loved Cordelia. She is a multifaceted character that fluctuates between cool and composed and on the verge of losing her shit, but does it in a way that makes her feel like she’s someone you know.

The plot is fast-paced and full of twists and reveals that had me setting the book aside so I could breathe. The first half of the book felt familiar, and while I was engaged, I wasn’t totally sucked in. That changed about halfway in when things started going south for Cordelia. Once I hit that point, I couldn’t stop reading, and I stayed up way too late to finish. Things kept getting worse and worse, and I needed to see how or if Cordelia could get herself out of the predicament she’d found herself in.

I only had a couple of (very minor) gripes with this one. First of all, Cordelia’s niece mentions that she is playing Zelda on her Xbox. Being a gamer nerd, I know this isn’t possible because Zelda is a Nintendo exclusive, so she’d be playing it on her Switch – not her Xbox. There was also one particular evening in the book – the night that everything began to unravel for Cordelia – where I felt that way too much happened, and the timing didn’t add up. She meets a victim for dinner in the evening, takes him to her “spot,” kills him, dumps his body, goes home, and changes; then something huge happens, which then leads to a close call with her cop boyfriend, then a shower, then to the store to buy a few things (the store would have been closed by this point), comes home, cleans up, goes out to hide more evidence and then comes home and gets some sleep. I feel like ALL of that would have taken at least 8 hours to do, and the timing of things didn’t add up for me. I was able to get past it, but it really bugged me.

Minor annoyances aside, I found this one to be a lot of fun. Even though she felt somewhat familiar, Cordelia is a vigilante anti-heroine I couldn’t help but root for. If you’re looking for a dark and gritty book that will keep you on the edge of your seat, this is the one for you. Just be prepared not to do anything but read once you’ve hit the halfway mark. There’s no way you can stop this one once things really start to go south for Cordelia.