This was a great book. I loved every paragraph, every sentence and every word of this masterpiece! I read it in 12 hours, which is a lot for me to do! It had everything and more laid out in the novel! I sure hope There is more to come from this author! I am totally hooked!

Suspenseful, didn't see the twist coming and I read a lot of mysteries. Fast paced and a good read for a trip.

I've read Marshall Karp before. Like most people, the bulk of his work I've read is co-authored with James Patterson. His NYPD Red series is fun, but nothing to write home about. It's traditional, fast-paced, and shallow... but again, fun. So when I go to pick up one of his solo works (like his solo NYPD Red outing in 2022), I expect the same type of book of his that I've previously read. Upon completion of this, I'm not sure that's what I got. Yes, the chapters are short. Yes, there's a twist ending. But the book is more literary than his (or Patterson's) outings. This is more of a character study. The long story of woman's life, leading up to the twist. I appreciate Karp taking a bigger swing than maybe what people expect from him, but this felt too slow to be a thriller and too quick to be a literary novel. Some of the moments feel poignant, but the main character comes across too unlikable at times. Even the twist seems to be a way to justify her terrible actions. Overall, I enjoyed this, and I'll probably pick up his next book (especially because it's another NYPD Red book), but this one didn't really work for me. But again, I appreciate the attempt.

This was such a fast-paced read. It was a great family drama and psychological suspense story that pulled me in instantly. I also love how the author made each character feel so real.

Thanks to Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing.

Don’t Tell Me How to Die by Marshall Karp blends heart, humor, and a gripping twist-filled plot as a dying woman races to find the perfect new wife for her husband before her time runs out. Darkly funny and surprisingly emotional, this domestic thriller balances biting wit with deep emotional stakes and a storyline that spins in unexpected directions. A smart, suspenseful, and addictive read.

I put this book down around the 30% mark. I've seen reviews that said it started a little slow and got insanely good but I wasn't enjoying it enough to continue reading. The FMC was written in such an unrealistic way and I feel like a lot of the past about her as a teenager felt more fantasy for the author than reality. I wasn't expecting so much discussion about sexual experiences and it just wasn't what I was wanting to read about when I was picking up a thriller.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

🕯️ Don’t Tell Me How to Die by Marshall Karp is a thriller that dares to ask: what if your dying wish wasn’t just to say goodbye, but to control what comes after?

Told through the razor-sharp voice of Maggie Dunn—a woman facing a terminal diagnosis with more grit than grief—this novel is a genre-bending cocktail of domestic suspense, psychological drama, and darkly comic revenge fantasy. Maggie isn’t content to simply prepare her family for life without her. No, she’s determined to handpick her replacement: the next Mrs. Dunn. And she’s got three months to do it.

What makes this story sing isn’t just the premise—it’s the execution. Karp, known for his work on the NYPD Red series, brings his signature pacing and sardonic wit to a deeply personal narrative. Maggie is a force: flawed, funny, and ferociously protective. Her voice crackles with urgency and insight, especially as her mission to find the “perfect” woman spirals into something far more sinister. What begins as a heartfelt quest becomes a tangled web of secrets, betrayals, and moral ambiguity.

📚 Narrative Technique & Structure
Karp masterfully balances past and present, using flashbacks to reveal the trauma that shaped Maggie’s obsession. The pacing is brisk, but never rushed, and the plot twists—of which there are many—feel earned rather than gimmicky. The novel’s structure mirrors Maggie’s unraveling psyche, making the reader question not just who she can trust, but whether she can trust herself.

🎭 Maggie is the gravitational center of this story, but the supporting cast—especially her sister Lizzie and the women she investigates—are richly drawn. Each character feels like a fully realized person with their own motivations, which adds emotional heft to Maggie’s increasingly desperate decisions.

🎯 Don’t Tell Me How to Die is about control: over death, over legacy, over the chaos that grief leaves behind. It’s also a meditation on the limits of love and the dangers of trying to script the future. Karp doesn’t offer easy answers, and that’s what keeps you reading.

Fans of Gone Girl or Big Little Lies will find plenty to love, but Don’t Tell Me How to Die carves out its own space with a protagonist who’s as compelling as she is complicated. It’s a story about dying, yes—but more than that, it’s about how fiercely we fight to live on our own terms.

I Gave this a solid go. I did the ebook and the audio but 25% in I gave up. This sou ded intriguing but fell flat. I lost interest in the characters and DNF.

Heartstone NY Mayor and former prosecutor Maggie Dunn, who seems to have the perfect life, learns at age forty-three that she has months to live.

Maggie is determined to find the perfect 'right Mrs. Dunn' to marry her surgeon husband Alex and mother their children Kevin and Katie when she dies.

This is a gripping read, filled with sympatico characters and surprises at every turn. Don't miss this one!

Don’t start this book on a time crunch. This book is addictive, you start it and next thing you know it’s 2:15am, and you’re fighting your inner demons to go to bed rather than keep reading.

I was hesitant on a book about rare disorders. But as a cancer patient it was handled well, wasn’t overly triggering, and was part of a story you won’t soon forget.

Don’t Tell Me How to Die is a solid, fast-paced crime thriller packed with action, sarcasm, and plenty of sharp dialogue. Marshall Karp delivers another engaging entry in the Lomax & Biggs series, with the usual mix of wit and dark crime drama.

The mystery kept me hooked, with enough twists to stay interesting without feeling over the top. Lomax and Biggs are still a great duo—smart, funny, and full of chemistry. If you’re a fan of detective banter with serious stakes, you’ll enjoy this.

It’s not breaking new ground in the genre, but it is a reliably entertaining read—perfect for fans of fast-moving police procedurals with heart.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | A Flip-the-Script Page-Turner Till the Very End

Don't Tell Me How to Die is an absolute page-turner! Just when you think you’ve figured it out, the story flips the script and keeps you guessing. The twists were unexpected and brilliantly done, with tension building right up to the final pages. It’s smart, gripping, and packed with suspense. I couldn’t put it down! A must-read for anyone who loves a thriller that keeps you on your toes until the very end.

Maggie Dunn has always been something of a control freak. She’s pretty sure it was due to her beloved mother dying from a rare, hereditary blood condition when she and her younger sister Lizzie were only in their teens, leaving their entire family both bereft and adrift.

Kate McCormick had done her best to prepare her daughters for her passing. Perhaps most importantly, she warned the girls that they needed to look out for their dad, who had no idea what he’d be in for as a handsome, successful middle-aged widower. The teenagers promised to protect their family, with Maggie making good on her vow even if the rest of her adolescence was filled with poor choices and multiple walks on the wild side.

Eventually, Maggie and Lizzie grew up, one becoming a lawyer and the other a doctor, but both of them responsible and fully functional members of society. Maggie even met the man of her dreams, got married and had two kids. But now the illness that felled her mother has come for her as well.

While Maggie knows better than to fight the inevitable, there are still some things she knows she can control. Foremost among them is what will happen to her family once she’s gone:

QUOTE
The more I ruminated about it, the more obsessed I became with their lives after my death. It was not a random obsession. My shrink confirmed what I already knew. It was PTSD.

When my mother died, I watched in horror as a parade of perfumed piranhas in pretty print dresses flocked to my grieving father like stray cats to an overturned milk truck. And when the wrong woman stepped in to take my mother’s place, the consequences were devastating.

I refused to let the same thing happen to Alex and my kids. [...] I was going to spend my last remaining days on earth searching for the next Mrs. Dunn. I might not find her, but I would die trying.
END QUOTE

Maggie isn’t about to settle for just any woman to take her place as the next Mrs Dunn either. She wants a good, loving person to step into her shoes, and will leave no stone unturned in her quest to find the perfect replacement.

Thing is, Maggie has a lot of secrets – a trait that she’ll soon discover isn’t unique to herself as she scrutinizes potential candidates and discovers that some women in her hometown of Heartstone are even less suitable, and more dangerous, than she’d expected. What should be the stuff of tearjerking dramadies quickly takes on a sinister aspect as Maggie realizes that selecting her successor isn’t the only thing she should be doing with her limited time on earth. Maggie’s always been the proactive kind, so why not use her remaining days to avenge a few wrongs while she’s busy investigating?

No one seems to be a more worthy target of Maggie’s vengeance than the woman who sets off a media hubbub with her sudden on-camera appearance during veteran reporter Irv Hollingsworth’s live broadcast of local flooding:

QUOTE
And then, as if the media gods had come down to help the big man claim his place in broadcasting history, she appeared on camera. A woman. Floating face down on the surface of the pond.

For a second, maybe two, the only sound that could be heard was the white noise of the rain hammering on the water. Then Big Irv regained his composure and heralded her arrival with two words. Probably not the same two that most people would choose, but Irv was a TV pro. He knew what would resonate.

“Good Lord,” he said in a reverent breath.
END QUOTE

There’s no way that a death this public could go uninvestigated. Will everyone accept the eventual and official ruling of the woman’s suicide? Will Maggie get away with murder? How would you punish someone who’s already at death’s door anyway?

This twisty thriller had me gasping at the sheer audacity of Marshall Karp’s fiendish plotting, as he expertly unfolds this complicated and dazzling story. Maggie is genuinely doing her best to look out for her family, even as she runs into unexpected obstacles and makes some horrifying discoveries and decisions.

As someone who far prefers mysteries to domestic dramas, I did find that some of the more sentimental passages dragged for me. Those were, however, just Mr Karp’s way of lulling readers into a false sense of security before pulling the rug out from under us with yet another terrific plot twist. Trust no one in this genre-mashing thriller, even as you can’t help but cheer for Maggie on her quixotic quest to make the best of her imminent death and secure her family’s safety and happiness even after she’s gone.

This book was good! It was easy to read and super fun. It had me hooked from the beginning! The characters were amazing! I loved the way they were described

What a ride! This was a trhiller worth the name thriller. It's fast paced so as a reader you never get a pause but it's so much fun and twisty that I don't want it to stop. A perfect page turner!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eArc in exchange for my honest opinions.

This read is dark, comical and emotional all in one. What would you do when faced with your own mortality, how would you help your spouse and children cope without you?
Find a new wife and mother for them, duh…

The story follows a fiercely determined mother who, upon learning she has only months to live, embarks on a mission to find her replacement—before someone else does it badly. What starts as an unconventional love story quickly spirals into a tension-filled exploration of legacy, trust, and control. With its unexpected twists and signature sardonic humor, the novel walks a fine line between heartbreak and hilarity.

Maggie sets out on an almost absurdly practical yet deeply heartfelt mission: finding the perfect woman to replace her in her family's life. With sharp wit and a no-nonsense attitude, she navigates grief, control, and love in a way that is both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. If you enjoy strong, flawed heroines, a touch of twisted humor, and an exploration of what it means to truly care for those you leave behind, this book is a must-read.

Equal parts darkly funny and emotionally gripping, Don't Tell Me How to Die is a heart-wrenching, fast-paced tale of love, mortality, and one woman’s audacious plan to secure her family’s future—on her own terms.

This author has delivered a unique take on a protagonist who’s facing terminal illness not with despair, but with calculated determination.Making this more than a suspenseful ride—it's a poignant look at what we leave behind and who we become when the clock is running out.

🤩 I loved this! 🤩

Omg this was so freaking good. I went into it somewhat blind (which is to say, I read the blurb a while ago & decided I wanted to read it, but when I went back to start reading it, I completely forgot what it was about 🥲). I thought it was a thriller of some kind, but the first part is more so a domestic drama- which I wasn’t sure if I was going to like, but even that was fantastic. When more of the thriller aspect comes to play, I was blown away.

I cried at parts of this; I laughed; I was holding on to the edge of my seat. I just straight up loved this. Talk about a genre-bender! Definitely one of my top reads this year.

𝑾𝒉𝒐 𝑰'𝒅 𝑹𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐:
Everyone! Just go in blind, and have a fun time!

Marshall Karp's Don't Tell Me How To Die plunges you into a world where the line between life and death is razor-thin, and the clock is ticking with every pulse. This isn't just a thriller; it's a high-stakes race against time, where every twist and turn reveals a new layer of danger.

Karp masterfully crafts a narrative that crackles with suspense, drawing you into a web of intrigue and deception. The characters are compelling, the plot is intricate, and the pacing is relentless, keeping you on the edge of your seat until the final, heart-stopping revelation.

Don't Tell Me How To Die is a gripping and suspenseful read that will leave you breathless. If you crave a thriller that combines sharp wit with relentless action and a mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end, this is the book for you.

Okay fine. Everyone that said this was five star book was RIGHT. I didn’t know what the hype could possible be about but eventually you get to a point in the book where you realize HOLY SH!T. It was the best moment ever.

I knew from reviews that this thriller would pack an emotional punch and let’s just say it was not the punch I thought it was. It was better!

This book took me on emotional rollercoaster at first and then when there was this shift, I clung to this book for dear life. Definitely one of my favorite books of the year!

Oh and Marshall is awesome and a cool author makes a good book that much better!

This was such a compelling suspenseful gripping story plot! It had me wanting to keep reading and so intrigued! Such a page turner and loved the way it wrapped around.