You’d Look Better As A Ghost by Joanna Wallace

You’d Look Better As A Ghost is a novel about a serial killer attending a grief counselling group who finds herself entangled in something unexpected. Claire sees people as ghosts right before she kills them, but now she’s dealing with her father’s death (not by her). An email mix up sends her on the trail of Lucas, the man who sent the email, but Lucas was tangled up in other things, and now Claire seems to be being watched as her serial killer side is under threat.

This book has such a fun cover and title, and the tone of it does match up to that, with flippant first person narration from Claire, who doesn’t feel bad about her killing and sees it as almost inevitable. Occasional third person chapters that flash back to Claire’s childhood fill in some of her story, but the focus is on a black comedy thriller type plot as Claire goes between her grief counselling group and a nursing home trying to get things back on track after killing Lucas. There’s plenty of ridiculousness and some red herrings as the plot goes on, and I could really imagine it adapted into a darkly comic film, as the pace of the plot and the twists it takes feel similar to other comedy films with a lot of death and mishaps.

Claire is a fun protagonist, highly opinionated and treats being a serial killer like a quirk she has, and that makes the book an enjoyable read, nothing too complex or requiring a lot of thought, but a good ride through the twists and turns that leaves you guessing if she will get caught.