Kill Your Darlings A Novel
“Kill Your Darlings” by Peter Swanson is a novel published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2025, featuring 288 pages in English. This inventive murder mystery unfolds in reverse, exploring the complexities of a long marriage while posing the provocative question of why a devoted wife would contemplate murdering her husband. The narrative follows Thom and Wendy Graves, a couple married for over twenty-five years, as they navigate their seemingly idyllic life in a Victorian home on the Massachusetts north shore.
Readers will find a compelling exploration of key moments in Thom and Wendy’s relationship, including their fiftieth birthday party and the birth of their son, Jason. As the story progresses backward, it reveals the dark secrets that have shaped their lives and marriage, ultimately leading to a shocking act they conspired to commit in their youth. This psychological thriller delves into themes of love, betrayal, and the weight of hidden truths, inviting readers to piece together the puzzle of a relationship defined by a singular, life-altering decision.
Official synopsis Publisher
“A dazzlingly clever murder mystery, told backwards, asking the question: why would this loving wife murder her husband?”–Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Famous Last Words and Wrong Place Wrong Time
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Kind Worth Killing and Eight Perfect Murders comes an inventive, utterly propulsive murder-mystery in reverse, tracing a marriage back in time to uncover the dark secret at its heart.
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.
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