At first, DON’T KILL ME BECAUSE I’M BEAUTIFUL seems like standard thriller fare: A young girl named Brooklyn gets kidnapped. She’s found but grows up to be an insecure woman who lives in the shadow of her actress mother. And when she gets involved in a crime of her own, she has nowhere to turn. The book is filled with the usual shady characters, like a hardboiled detective and a sleazy Hollywood producer named Max Moneymaker. But author H. Gewirtz manages to reimagine the usual tropes, with interesting personalities and real-world reflections that shine brightest when it balances the expected with the unimaginable. Gewirtz creates quirky characters, like hospital volunteer Bodhi Sharma, who’s a psychic. Bodhi is the thread that weaves the plot together and takes it into the realm of the mystical, which allows Gewirtz to weave a complex, nuanced story.

DON’T KILL ME BECAUSE I’M BEAUTIFUL walks a fine line between humor and deeper meaning. Despite its snarky narrative tone, it’s full of thoughtful social commentary, such as: “Word of the Pandemic trickled out slowly from China, and the West had the hubris to believe that such an ancient and barbaric curse could never be a serious threat to them.” This imagining of the United States two years in the future, just when the COVID-19 pandemic is starting to recede, stokes complicated emotions in the reader — on one hand intrigued, on the other hand uncomfortable reading about the lives lost and the devastation wrought while still actually living in a pandemic world. The book falters from its tightrope, however, whenever the author goes too far in one direction. For example, there’s so much sexual tension in DON’T KILL ME BECAUSE I’M BEAUTIFUL that it seems to take over the story. It’s somehow both the cause of and answer to everyone’s problems, to the point where it loses all meaning and just becomes another plot device. Another example is the objectifying tone the narrator takes toward women, especially Brooklyn’s mother, who’s defining quality is often how “sexy” she looks.

While DON’T KILL ME BECAUSE I’M BEAUTIFUL occasionally loses its balance, overall it’s an thrilling, engaging read that will keep readers in suspense until the last page.

~Christina Doka for IndieReader