Identical triplets live a very unconventional life. They find a mark, wait until their mark falls for them, and then kill them. There is no doubt that the story just might make you think twice because that was certainly the case with me.

They are Sissy, Moody and Iris. These are not their birth names, but they are what they go by when they meet the boyfriends that they work hard to make fall in love with them. The problem is, Sissy starts to deter from the plan. Her mark is Edison, a widower that she gets just a little bit too close to. They have a time limit with their mark and the closer Sissy gets to Edison, the more than lines get blurred for her.

The fact that they are identical plays into how the story develops. Although the story is unusual, including things such as violence and murder as well as the bonds of sisterhood and love, and painful pasts play into what happens in this surprisingly thrilling, although a bit disturbing story.

Ren DeStefano presents this remarkable debut novel with aplomb. This book definitely made me think and a sad as it was in some parts, it manage to end on a note of hope.

Many thanks to Berkley Books and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.

How I'll Kill You is a brilliant and gripping thriller that will leave you on the edge of your seat. The story is both suspenseful and heart-wrenching, with a captivating portrayal of the complex relationship between three sisters.

Sissy is one of three triplets; they were abandoned as babies and brought up in various foster homes (mostly separated). As adults they are serial killers. Moody and Iris have each killed three men, and Sissy is the clean-up person, and it’s finally her turn. They pick out a man, get him to fall in love with them, then murder him. (One of them usually works “alone” while the others mostly hide away, just making sure one of the others is out and about somewhere noticeable as an alibi at the time the other is doing the killing.) And make a nice clean getaway. That’s how it works. But Sissy makes the mistake of really falling in love.

Wow! None of these women is particularly likeable, though I suppose Sissy is the most of the three (I guess, given what they do, that’s not a surprise). Not only did Sissy fall in love with Edison, she even made friends (really became friends; something the sisters also tend to avoid beyond how the “friend” can be of help to them getting away with what are doing) with the neighbour. I was really not sure how this book was going to end and it really surprised me, but I thought it was done really well.

Having an alibi for murder is much easier when no one knows you’re a set of disturbed triplets. The time has come for Sissy’s first murder and she wants her first time to be special, like it was for her sisters when they killed their boyfriends. Sissy finds the perfect mark but mistakenly falls in love, leaving her sisters to question her loyalty. This fast-paced thriller is suspenseful from the start, with tension building to a surprise twist. For fans of Dexter and "My Sister the Serial Killer."

How I’ll Kill You has an interesting premise: triplet sisters, abandoned at birth, raised in the foster care system. After a childhood full of disappointment, betrayal, and hurt, they learn that they can only rely on each other. When Iris, the oldest, snaps and kills her much older lover, Sissy, the youngest by just minutes, handles the cleanup and makes sure Iris won’t be found out. They decide then that they’ll never let men hurt them again; rather, they’ll take lovers, win them over, and then kill them.

As Iris and Moody leave a growing number of corpses across the country, Sissy ensures no trace is left of her sisters’ crimes. She’s the one who keeps them off of law enforcement’s radar. She’s always been the steady one. The sensible one.

Until now.

It’s time for Sissy’s first kill. She sees him in a diner in Rainwood, Arizona, and she just knows. He’s her mark. As her assumed identity of “Jade,” she’ll have six months to win him over and make him love her before she bids him the final farewell. None of them counted, though, on Sissy falling in love with him.

This story goes some dark places. It’s a pretty scathing indictment of the foster care system, where the girls were either cared for but couldn’t stay, treated with indifference, or actively harmed. However they were treated, they came out of the system damaged. The book is also stark in its descriptions of how Sissy handles a cleanup job, so if you’re squeamish, be prepared.

But the book has its beautiful parts, too. Love of family is central to the tale, even if that love has been twisted and misguided along the way. Sissy and her sisters love each other and have each other’s backs. The relationship between Edison and Sissy is genuine, and Sissy’s internal struggle when facing a choice between her sisters and a man she didn’t expect to love made me want to hug her. Sissy also finds an unexpected friend in their neighbor Dara, her first real friend outside of her family.

My prosecutor brain couldn’t help but think what a nightmare this would be for law enforcement. Three identical siblings – how could you ever prove which one actually committed the crime? Of course, they’d have to get caught first….

How I’ll Kill You is a solid four-star read for me.

It began as a fit of anger, the feeling of betrayal, when the first of the triplets killed her lover who made promises he would never keep. After that the sisters made an oath that they would kill their lovers and they have, except for Sissy/Jade who hasn’t found the one yet. But it’s her turn and her sisters are expectant. Sissy sees Edison in a bar and knows he’s the one. She finds the perfect burial plot. Now all she has to do is figure out how she’ll kill him in Ren DeStefano’s How I’ll Kill You.

Of the triplets, Sissy is the fixer. The one who cleans up the other’s messes. If you ever needed to get rid of a body and clean a crime scene so that the police would never find any evidence, she’s your woman.

How I’ll Kill You is told in first person, which does and doesn’t work. On the one obvious hand, we’re privy to Sissy/Jade’s thoughts but ultimately we never come to understand her sisters except for a hint of their true characters that emerges at the end. Also, the narration makes Sissy less sympathetic with her constant dwelling on the novel’s title: how she will kill Edison. Is she unreliable or just in need of really good therapy? Both, perhaps, but mostly the latter. By distancing the reader from the sisters, though, does this create more suspense? Especially if we’re not certain of what their actions/reactions would be and just what they’re capable of. Food for thought.

The novel is dark as are all of the characters with the exception of Edison’s step-daughter (but she does have dark things happen to her). Even Edison shows a dark side that draws Sissy even closer to him since she sees a reflection of herself.

While the reader might feel a touch (or a lot, depending on your perception) of sympathy for Sissy due to her circumstances, one never feels it fully because she never exhibits free will but allows herself to be manipulated from what she deems is loyalty and love. That’s one reason why I kept swiftly turning the pages. Logically, Sissy should spend her life behind bars, but will she? This quandary certainly makes for good discussion and debate.

Dark and twisty, a gripping page turner. That still has me firmly sitting on the fence.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Author Ren DeStefano has rendered a unique psychological thriller featuring twenty-five year old serial killer triplets in How I'll Kill You. The two older siblings have murdered their lovers with Sissy/Jade stepping in to clean up the scene, making sure no evidence remains. Iris and Moody think it's time for Jade to make her first kill, and she knows she needs to step up to the plate. The first order of business is to choose a mark, seduce him and over about six months time make him fall in love with her. Jade chooses Ellison, a young, vulnerable widow with a stepdaughter who still hangs around. Jade does all the right things to draw him in even as she fantasizes over ways to kill him. Their chemistry is insane and before you know it, Ellison is in love. Perfect! Problem is so is Jade. That's a big no/no - never ever fall for your mark. Jade knows her sisters won't let her back out of the kill. She'll have to finish the deadly deed even as it breaks her heart. There's no way she can choose Ellison over her sisters. The least she can do is find a way to kill him as painless as possible and bury him in a peaceful, beautiful place.

How I'll Kill You is an intense, improbable, insane story that I couldn't put down! DeStefano has created characters that jump off the page, grab you by the throat and draw you into the middle of their madness. While identical in appearance, each sister is an individual with totally different personalities although all are charlatans with the ability to assume different identities. Like sirens, they possess the competence to attract their marks and completely hypnotize them into being complacent before they strike. Through backstory, the triplets dark, sad past in the foster system is revealed and readers learn about a series of tragic events that molded two of them into killers with the other called in for cleanup. Once reunited, they swore to never part ways again and to always have each others' back. Now Jade is faced with an impossible decision - her sisters or only man she's ever loved. And she's carrying another secret - one she'll protect with her life.

DeStefano has brilliantly crafted a psychological masterpiece in How I'll Kill You. I read this story mostly in one sitting because I couldn't imagine how she'd tie the twisted plot lines together by the end. Any ending I imagined wasn't good - someone was going to lose, someone was going to die. Who would it be? Read this one if you love edge of your seat suspense, a challenge figuring things out, and/or a unique outside of the box, character driven thriller.

Triplet female serial killers who murder men they get into relationships with? Yes please. The only catch is- our main character is falling in love with the man she plots to kill.
I struggled with my rating a little for this one because I HATE romance in my thrillers and there obviously is some of that and the plot was dragging for me just a little between the 20-60% range. HOWEVER I was still so invested in this plot and what was going to happen I just needed to keep flipping pages and the more I think about this book the more I enjoyed it. I had to suspend my disbelief a little for this one but had a lot of fun with it when I did. If you don’t mind romance subplots mixed with your murder- this would be a good book for you.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A crazy WTF thriller. Like seriously WTF. I don't usually like crazy books, or rather books with crazy people so I'm not entirely sure why I picked this up, but I'm sure glad I did.

Three triplets find people to love and then kill them. Up until now, Sissy has been only part of the cleanup, but now it's her turn. She sets her sights on Edison. He's good, and kind, and a bit broken. When it seems Sissy might be wavering on the deal, her relationship with her sisters is tested.

There are many 🤯moments, and I was questioning so many things, speculating the ending, missing the mark most of the time. As crazy as it is, it was also sad, moving and depressing. Sometimes even a little hopeful. It was addictive and crazy and I loved it.

An incredible debut

This a story of serial killer triplet sisters who murder their boyfriends.

It is told through the perspective of Sissy, who always handles the cleanup of her sisters’ kills. The triplet sisters make up new identities, fall in love with a man, kill him and skip town.

But now it’s Sissy’s turn to make a kill, and she’s picked her mark — and ends up falling in love with him. The book is about how she will kill him; ad she’s plotting his murder, she (oops!) falls in love with him.

I’ve been subjected to a string of mediocre thrillers this year and this one was such a welcome relief. It’s enthralling and so unique. I’ve never read a book like this one. It was enthralling and horrifying and SO engaging, and I could not put it down.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book.

Three women. Identical triplets found abandoned shortly after birth and brought up in the foster care system. Now they are grown and are on a mission across the country to kill. They already have four victims and are scouting for their fifth.

When a man stops to help what appears to be two women stranded on the side of the road and offers to change their flat tire, they kill him, too. But he was not the target. That is a man who one of the women will seduce and kill. And they already have him picked out.

I stopped reading at that point, about 3-4 chapters in. I just couldn't. There is no sympathy, empathy or real feeling of any kind exhibited by these women and I just didn't want to participate in their continuing murder spree.

I cannot recommend this book as I cannot imagine anything positive would come of reading it.

Sissy is an identical triplet, and her sisters Iris and Moody are her only family. They were abandoned as infants and have made a pact to never be separated again. They have been through dark times together and helped each other cover up and carry out unspeakable crimes. Sissy has never killed anyone, but her time has come to choose a mark. She finds one in Edison, but also begins to realize that she may not be able to keep her promise to her sisters when she’s fallen for the person she’s agreed to kill.

I loved this dark and twisted thriller! The concept was so unique. I love a thriller with an antihero/villain narrator, and Sissy certainly is a memorable one. The triplets’ backstory was so interesting, and I loved finding out more about their psyche and how they became the way they were. This book reminded me a bit of You by Caroline Kepnes, not necessarily in the plot, but because of the way the antihero narrator draws you in and makes you obsessively turn pages to find out what will happen next. This book had so many layers and twists and turns that I couldn’t put it down! I would absolutely recommend this one to any fan of suspenseful books.

Thank you to Ren DeStefano, Berkley Publishing, and Netgalley for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

How I'll Kill You is a fictional thriller, but if you are a true crime fan, you will find this peek into the female serial killer fascinating. The triplets get men to fall in love with them, then they kill them. This isn't a quick job for them. They have a whole process and it is creepy and disturbing.

The girls were separated and placed in different foster homes. This shaped their lives in unrepairable ways. It turns the girls evil from the beginning. But, Sissy was different. She would have had a shot at normal if it weren't for her sisters. When the story opens, the girls have already committed several murders and it is finally Sissy's turn to select a mark and kill him. The story is told from her POV and it is fascinating to see how enamored she is with her mark so quickly. So, it's not really a surprise when she actually falls for him. However, her psychopathic sisters are not going to let her live happily ever after. The pace of the story is kind of slow, but the tension is being in Sissy's brain. This is a twist on the thriller because of its slow pace, but it is engaging!

This was an interesting take on the profile of serial killers. Instead of a lone male, we have female triplets: Iris, Moody, and Sissy. These are not their real names as the author likes to constantly remind us.

Narrated by Sissy, we learn that her sisters have murdered in the past and Sissy has helped dispose of the body, cleaned up the crime scene, and due to this has aided them to remain undetected. It has turned into a sort of game, where there's a list of rules to murder and get away with it including a timeline and choosing the right victim.

This book was certainly entertaining and I loved the twisted sister dynamics between the triplets. Where it fell short for me was the lack of character development for Iris and Moody, but this made sense for where we enter into their lives. The author did give us a little glimpse into each girl's upbringing as orphans in the system and there is a little commentary on nature vs. nurture for how serial killers come to be.

I really loved the idea of sisterhood in a thriller and personally didn't care for the romance. I felt the focus should have been one or the other but having both left not enough development for either.

For a book with the title of "How I'll Kill You" this was an unexpectedly fun read. The subject matter was kept light and intriguing throughout the entirety of the book and I really liked that. It could have been darker but for Sissy, our main character, it worked better in my opinion as a lighthearted read. I think what really made it great for me was the fact that it had me guessing at what would happen. Would Sissy give in to her sisters, would she turn against them, do something completely unexpected? I had no idea where exactly the story would take us and that made it very intriguing. At one point I was even wondering if this was real or Sissy's imagination.

I will say, at times the story seemed to lose some of its excitement and slowed down a little too much. But overall, I was entertained on every page and I really did enjoy getting to try and figure out what would happen before it did and for that I highly recommend this book.

This is such a different quirky read and I love that it's a murder thriller with family drama and romance in it too. I listened to the audiobook and it's narrated by the amazing @karissavacker and she always brings her A game to a story. I loved how she created such unique voices for each of the triplets. Her voice and the fast-paced writing style kept me enthralled and I was sorry to see it end. What a fun, twisty, wild ride!

It took me until the very end to come to a conclusion about how I felt about this book. There are good parts to the story and some not-so-good parts.

How I'll Kill You is the tale of identical triplet sisters who were abandoned as babies and grew up in foster care, sometimes separated and sometimes two of them together. Sissy, Iris, and Moody had difficult lives and had to become scrappy and wise to get by. At some point, this took a turn towards murder. Thus far, Iris and Moody have been the ones to commit the murders and Sissy is the clean-up person. Now, it's Sissy's turn for her first kill, and the rule is that they can only kill their boyfriends/lovers. She takes on the identity of Jade, and she meets Edison. But she never anticipated that she would have real feelings for him. Can she go through with it or will she go along with her sisters, the only stable relationships she has ever had?

This is certainly a unique storyline, and I honestly didn't have buy in about it until the end. I was really puzzled about the motivation throughout, although that becomes a bit clearer as the story progresses. Some of the characters are well developed and intriguing, I was rooting for Sissy/Jade and only wanted things to work out well for her. Yet I never really got a good feel for her sisters, who just popped in and out at will and seemed more like caricatures than real people.

This book has a very melancholy feel, and I couldn't quite put my finger on the genre, which weakened the story for me. There's definitely the murder/killing aspect, but there's also some pretty steamy romance, as well as a lot of family drama. It's quite darker than I was initially expecting based on the description and the cover.

Overall, this is an intriguing debut, fairly fast-paced, but despite its outlandish premise, I'm not sure I'll remember much of it for long.

Do you ever finish a book and think, what did I just read???

That was How I’ll Kill You for me. It is the story of triplets who were abandoned as babies and grew up apart in the foster care system, only to be reunited as they got older and as they became serial killers. My brain is scrambled from this book. This book is bananas and the things these three sisters do and think are bonkers. But yet, even with such a gruesome storyline, I was captivated by their relationship, the unfolding of their character development and whether or not they would end their evil ways. It was so clever, some engrossing and just so unique. And so creepy and intense at the same time.

How I'[ll Kill You by Ren DeStefano had me hooked from the first chapter. The most shocking part was to find out that Sissy was not a twin but actually a triplet. The 3 sisters Sissy, Moody, and Iris have spent their childhood apart growing up in the foster care system since they were born. They were found hours old abandoned by their mother with not clue who or why she left them. Iris and Moody along with Jade has been going from state to state with false ID's and only paying for things in cash. They find a target and gets them to fall in love with them and then kill them. So far Sissy has only helped with cleaning up the messes that her sisters have made. Now it is Sissy's turn to find her mark and make her first kill. They end up in a small sleepy town in southern Arizona, where "Jade" (Sissy) makes Edison his mark. They soon start a realationship, Iris and Moody start to worry that Sissy is going to be unable to go through with the plan. The closer the date comes the more "Jade" is falling for Edison. Once Jade finds out that Edison's wife has been dead a year and that Sheila had a daughter from her previous marriage and Sadie is still part of his life. Jade befriends Sadie so that when Edison is missing she will have a support system. Jade also befriends her next door neighbor Dara who is being abused by her husband Tim. When an argument goes wrong and Dara stabes Tim, Jade is once again called in to clean up the mess. While all of this is happening Iris and Moody have their own plans that they aren't sharing. Dara dies of an overdose and Jade feels that somehow her sisters were involved. Then Sadie goes missing. When Iris comes to pice Jade up from Edison's house she soon realizes that this was their plan all along. They were behind Dara's death and Sadie's kidnapping. Jade has to choose between her sisters or Edison and Sadie. I loved the book up until the end. I felt it was rushed and everything worked out Jade/Sissy in the end. I did love the who concept of the book and how the sisters were split up between foster care and that Edison had his own struggles with the loss of his wife and struggling with his drinking. The characters felt real to me and in the end I did want everything to work out betweenJade/Sissy and Edison.

From my blog: Always With a Book

It’s no secret that I love books about serial killers…there’s just something about these kinds of stories that call to me and so when I saw this one, I knew I had to read it. And I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this one…it had much more depth than I expected…in such a good way!

I think what I loved most about this book is that it’s about sisters who are serial killers – triplets who haven’t had the easiest upbringing and wind up becoming a band of serial killers. You’ll have to read the book to find out why, but it’s the fact that there is some backstory, though I do wish this part was flushed out just a bit more, that really makes this story so unique. I did love the character development we did get and felt this really helps with the motivation behind what is going on now. And it’s all told from one of the sister’s point of view, Sissy’s. Being in her head, getting her internal dialogue as we progress through the story just gives this one such a unique angle.

This is a quick read, no doubt about that – I basically binge-read it in a day. I was pulled in immediately and while this is definitely a book you have to suspend disbelief, it’s a fun read, but also one that does have some depth. And I loved that the ending was not what I was expecting!

If you love books with morally gray characters, this one is for you! This was a great debut novel and I cannot wait to see what Ren DeStefano has in store for us next!