Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

‘Incel: How-to-Kill Handbook’ by Anonymous was made available by BooksGoSocial via NetGalley.

While it is clear that there is an audience for this book given it has attracted some enthusiastic reviews, at 25% I knew that it just wasn’t for me. So I DNFed.

I won’t post to Amazon or give a star rating on Goodreads.

When I continued to read this book after the early chapters, I broke a long-standing vow I'd made to myself: When the main character is cast as an American, yet the entire narrative (including first-person, interior monologue) is in the British vernacular, I Will Stop Reading. Nothing good can come from such cognitive dissonance.

But wait, I thought: This guy tells us at the outset that he's an unreliable narrator. In what is supposedly his diary, he says he must write down his life story "because if I'm not in my right mind, I'll make it so on the page. I'll write my way out of this. Cover over the cracks. Make things doubtful. Grey."

Maybe if I keep reading, I told myself, I'll find out this narrator fellow isn't really American at all. Maybe the language is poorly-concealed subterfuge.

No such luck. This book is not gritty and elemental. It's just a cheap, self-published fraud, and a very confusing and mean-spirited one at that.

I received an advance readers copy from NetGalley and Books Go Social.

DNF 20%
It disappoints me to write this, however I could not finish this book. Based on the description I was looking for it to be gritty and intense. What I read was a jumbled journal of a wannabe psycho. The conversations were disjointed and confusing. Based on the cover I thought the guy were be intense with sex appeal. I tried to keep reading but I had to reread many passages to figure out where he was and who was with him.

Absolutely loved this book!! Very unique- like nothing I have ever read before. I would highly recommend it to avid readers such as myself.

This book is written in a language trying for the tough, private dick style, but fails horribly. It's too much nonsense and impossible to read.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3437651208

5 STARS. I admit, I did a certain amount of groaning and eye-rolling when first approached by noir small press Audax Books about reviewing their latest title, the provocatively titled <i>incel: How-to-Kill Handbook</i>, because historically speaking, books I've received of this type under these circumstances have tended to be so terrible as to be almost unreadable. So it comes as a huge relief to be able to convey that this actually turned out to be one of the most surprisingly great novels I've read in the last year, with a smart wit and a high quality to the prose that you usually don't find with books of this type.

The secret here is that this is not actually a book about incels at all; although marketed by the publisher as the "true thoughts" (if not true story) of self-defined "<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43892189">Supreme Gentleman</a>" Calvin Loch (but more on this in a moment), which he supposedly first shared as a nonfiction memoir online until "public condemnation forced him underground," in actuality this is a murder mystery told from the viewpoint of our violent unreliable narrator, in the style of Jim Thompson's classic <i>The Killer Inside Me</i>, with only lip service paid to the incel movement through a random scattering of the specialized vocabulary (Chads, betas, blackpills, etc) that this movement uses to both justify and encourage each other's behavior.

Don't get me wrong, this is the precise reason the book is so good; for without the need to stick to any real-life events or a hardcore incel mindset, Loch instead provides us a nearly perfect three-act genre plot, smoothly guiding us through an evermore insane journey that starts at the quiet suburban law firm where he initially works, and ends with him being an international fugitive hiding out on a Caribbean island, with several detours along the way to interact with a thinly disguised Jeffrey Epstein. Plus, in the same spirit as Mary Harron's brilliant film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' <i>American Psycho</i>, Loch deliberately adds several scenes here that are just so over-the-top hilariously absurdist, we're left wondering whether he actually means for this to be a drama at all, but rather an extremely clever black comedy designed expressly to take the piss out of the incel movement, not champion it.

Let's be clear -- I don't buy for even a second that "Calvin Loch" is actually the person he's portraying himself as here. For one glaring thing, Loch-the-author is rather hard on Loch-the-character; at various points he describes himself as openly racist on top of his incel-like misogyny, with a huge amount of self-hatred and a growing belief that maybe suicide would be the best thing he could do for the world, a history of mental illness that requires medication that he sometimes skips, and an insistence that we shouldn't actually trust a word he's saying, because he might just be insane and making everything up. (Also, despite the author supposedly being American, his dialogue is full of British mannerisms -- "I've" instead of "I have," "I'm on about" instead "I'm talking about," "cop on" instead of "grow up," and more.) And also to make it insultingly obvious, since we now live in an age where we're all forced to be this insultingly obvious, let me clearly state that I in no way agree with or endorse the incel mindset, nor do I recommend the slaughtering of other human beings. But you don't have to be an incel to enjoy <i>incel: How-to-Kill Handbook</i>, just like you don't have to be a corrupt Texas sheriff serial killer to enjoy <i>The Killer Inside Me</i>. This should instead be looked at as a deliciously dark pulp noir, a great new addition to the genre that marks Audax as a growing power in this wing of the publishing world. (Or, at least we'll see -- I have another one of their books, the 9/11 paramedic serial-killer novel <i>American Slaughterhouse</i>, in the queue for review in another couple of weeks.) It comes strongly recommended to those who can stomach it, a delightfully horrible tale for those who are tired of our All Earnest Times.

I need to be real. I had to DNF @ about 40%. Lets talk about this absolutely bizzare arc I got- shall we?

This is a self published book that touts the "mystery author" thing- the author's name is the same as the main character. The book itself has a pretty nebulous in its plot details. Calvin has murdered someone. Hes changed his identity and presumably resumed a life as a lawyer. He is both obsessed with and at odds with his legal assistant, Angela. Calvin is a Red Pilled man/"incel" (though I am actually unclear if he would meet the traditional definition, as he himself says he is attractive and indicates that people find him attractive)

So this book is sort of the life and times of a Red Pill guy, which for those who don't know, is a man who believes that hyper-masculinity, abuse, and control is the only way to have relationships with women. The book uses a lot of Red Pill jargon- sometimes out of nowhere or inappropriately, to try to really push this idea that Calvin is a totally real incel- though it severely misses the mark for me and feels a little too put on.

There are some especially disgusting scenes in the beginning of this book where Calvin is emotionally abusing his legal assistant to the point of near trauma, and yet they still have her character seem to brush off these moments of trauma and just behave like he's some sort of scampy guy.

This is where the book REALLY falls short to me. I was going in hoping for a book criticizing toxic masculinity and red pill behavior- and while Calvin isnt a good guy, he gets a lot of wins. Its got some movie Tyler Durden syndrome in that not enough effort is made to make Calvin genuinely manipulative, so hes getting away with a lot on the surface when he shouldn't. This presents two possible truths about this book: Either this behavior is being brushed off by the author, or the author feels justified in writing women like absolute fucking idiots who are completely unaware and unable to decode VERY blunt sexist and dangerous behavior.

Outside of the social implications of Incel- How to Kill Handbook, its written like shit. Calvin, as stated, is entirely too blunt and not manipulative enough to be a believable successful villain protagonist. The book is scattered as hell, and its nearly impossible to follow what is going on at any given time. Even re reading some chapters of the book I found myself wondering how we moved from point A to point B- constant incoherent stream of consciousness; Switching subjects; and really bizarre and unnatural dialogue made this story hard to even hate read.

In conclusion, I don't know what I expected.

To be honest, I'm not sure that I can leave a full review of this book. After reading for 45 minutes, I stopped reading and moved on to something else; I found the style to be rambling, incoherant and utterly banal. When the book is titled 'How-to-kill Handbook', I was expecting something a bit more original and engaging, something akin to American Psycho or Perfume - both of which I love. There are only 3 other books that I have left unfinished - ordinarily I go by 'perseverance is the key' and push myself to finish books, even when I'm not enjoying them, adamant I will find something of value. However, I don't envisage ever picking this book up again or reading enough of it to present a more rounded opinion

incel: How-to Kill Handbook delves in to a deliciously sleazy world, that we all know exists but often turn a blind eye and refuse to acknowledge. It's also looks at own morality and what we consider to be right and wrong.

A sometimes uncomfortable but captivating and illuminating read.

I don't normally go for self-published books by the ubiquitous Anonymous, but this time I'm glad I did.

Incel claims to be a How-to-Kill Handbook. It's actually a multi-layered literary fiction novel narrated by a lawyer, Calvin Loch, who is on a mission to right the sexual injustices of the world. Using the language of the Incel Movement, Calvin seeks to justify a series of ever more bizarre and paranoid revenge attacks. Through using a non-linear narrative, we come to understand what may have led Calvin to be such a broken man. He clearly has suffered injustice, and Incel offers him a convenient framing device , but ultimately his problems are not about a lack of jawbone; they are not about Stacy and Becky and Chad.

This is a fairly long and carefully structured novel. It is complex, feeding background at just the right time. It is well written in a distinctive voice - a mixture of intelligent, whiny and self-entitled. Calvin is not loveable and his arrogance removes all possibility of sympathy. He is vile, but quite convincingly so.

In between Calvin's misdeeds, we get some wonderful depictions of life in a New York legal firm; a village on a Caribbean island; and the world of the rich and famous - all of whom are blessed with Calvin's presence on his mission.

So this isn't a How to Kill Handbook. It isn't teachy or preachy. It is a seamy, sleazy story of annihilation.

All this adds up to read line something written by Sergio de la Pava. Who knows? Perhaps it is...

Shocking serial killer diary. Many new terms, insight into milleanial's thoughts and mind, so I was glad for dictionary at the end of a book.

Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for the arc of Incel How to kill handbook.

After killing and murdering a man with a very good reason, A lawyer from New York City end up going off the radar and going away and begins life over on an island.

Under a new identity, Calvin Loch ‘fixes broken things’ for Chad and Stacy and nobody realizing the extent to which he end up going . he end up travelling the world as the authorities play catch-up with him. This is a serial killer’s diary, This is a chilling account exposing how in fact an intelligent person gets away with this. The verdict: crimes don’t warrant punishment if done by a balanced ‘bad man’ who believes that he’s doing good in many ways.

4 stars

Informative, but not an enjoyable read. I was unaware that such individuals and even communities exist. The amoral attitudes of the protagonist pushes into immoral behavior. I’m looking forward to my next book, so I can wash this one from my mind.