This was fun and twisted! A wild ride from start to finish! It's hard to describe the elements I liked without giving too much away, but the characters are really well-written onions, peeling back new facets with each chapter and shift. I really enjoyed it!

Read If You Like:
• Sharp, fast-paced thrillers with dark humor
• Women on the run
• Character-driven mysteries with social commentary
• Twisty plots with escalating tension
• A touch of Thelma & Louise chaos

Evie Gordon’s life isn’t glamorous—she’s a broke SAT tutor barely scraping by, with dreams of graduate school and a quiet escape from her reality. But everything changes when she shows up at a wealthy family’s mansion for a tutoring session and finds the parents dead—and a woman tied up under the stairs. Within minutes, Evie is on the run with the stranger, dodging police, media, and questions she doesn’t want to answer.

The road trip that follows is tense, strange, and darkly funny, unraveling not just the mystery of what happened in that house, but who Evie is when stripped of her carefully constructed life. The stranger she’s fleeing with doesn’t speak, but her presence forces Evie to examine the lies she’s told herself about power, ambition, and survival.

This novel is equal parts thriller and social satire, examining what it means to be complicit, ambitious, and desperate in a world obsessed with optics. Fast-moving and unsettling, it keeps the stakes high and the tension tighter with each chapter. A great pick if you love messy heroines, morally gray choices, and the thrill of watching everything spiral out of control.

Thanks to William Morrow for my gifted ARC!

This one started so fast and heavy! Bam! Bam! Bam! With two murders and an escape, but after a while it got a little redundant and the last 20% dragged.
I just couldn’t understand Evie’s actions at any point, I guess she didn’t either.

Killer Potential is basically a thriller - kind of a Hitchcockian at first where Evie, an SAT tutor, happens onto a murder scene and is blamed for it and goes on the run. At the murder of her employers, she finds a young woman tied up in the closet, and they escape together on a cross country (and back) trip. The whole country is looking for them, and Evie is not prepared for this, but her companion has some useful skills. The two of them build an interesting relationship. Evie is not particularly likable, but it's a good book to follow.

Killer Potential is Hannah Deitch's debut. The opening hook of this story drags you in and lets you know within these pages there will be a twisty ride. Within the first 4th of this book I was all in and could not wait to see what was about to unfold. Do we have a trustworthy narrator or an unreliable one? By this point in the story I wasn't sure what to believe.
By the half way mark I was sure I knew just how things were going to work. I was absolutely sure I could see the twist coming.
By the 75% mark I found myself saying "oh, that's not what I thought at all."
While this story does read as a debut novel, it has certainly left me with anticipation of what is to come from Hannah Deitch in the future.

Hannah Deitch's Killer Potential is a strong debut. I love a cat-and-mouse thriller, and this one delivers. It also has Thelma and Louise vibes, Did I disagree with some of the characters' decisions? Absolutely. Did it affect my enjoyment of the book? Not a bit. I can see this being a great spring break or summer beach read. Enough substance to keep a reader intrigued, but not so heavy that it requires too much thinking, which is what I crave in my warm-weather reads.

I really enjoyed this book! The characters all really had depth and I felt like I was actually there with them the whole time, on the run. I loved all the little plot twists and side characters we go to meet, and of course the big plot twist/reveal was amazing! I would definitely read another book by Hannah Deitch!

Evie is stuck in neutral after excelling in school and accumulating degrees. Tutoring rich kids seems easy enough, until she walks into a murder scene and finds a terrified woman hidden in the walls. Being in the wrong place at precisely the wrong time, Evie takes off running, before she can be arrested for murders she didn’t commit. Finding herself on the lam (which her liberal college education did NOT prepare her for) with a woman who won’t say a damn thing (much less explain why she was tied up behind a wall), she finds that she isn’t good at lying or self-preservation. Also, apparently running from the cops can make you horny. Very impressive debut novel and a great beach-read candidate. ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

🔪🩷 Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

Evie Gordon is an SAT tutor who stumbles upon her wealthy employers murdered and finds a scared, mute woman tied up in the walls of the house. When someone else arrives at the house, she knows she looks guilty and runs. But not before rescuing this woman and taking her as she flees.

What a wild ride. This book is dark but written in an upbeat, casual tone reminiscent of Thelma and Louise. After they hit the road, Evie is all over the news. To escape recognition they travel cross country and a strange but necessary friendship blooms, and then maybe something more. It’s a cat-and-mouse chase, queer love story, and mystery mixed into one. It’s full of action and I found myself flying through, needed to know what happened next. The story slightly meandered towards the end, which I think took away from the strong first half, but all in all this was an enjoyable thrill ride of a book.

This book hit all the cliche buttons for me. A down on her luck girl (except she was nearly thirty), rich people are evil, two women left alone will eventually become lesbians, and things will always work out in the end. Honestly, I had a hard time even finishing this book. The writing was adequate but uninspired and the character development was shallow at best. The ending was to be expected.

“𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐦𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬. 𝐈 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲, 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧-𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐧.”

Rating: 3.5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Pub Date: 3/18/25

*Thank you @NetGalley and @WilliamMorrowBooks for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆: Evie is a former TAG student with a college degree she isn't using and significant debt from student loans, making ends meet as an SAT tutor to mostly wealthy families. One Sunday she arrives at her students home, to find her parents murdered. She finds a woman bruised, tied up, and mute under the stairs. The student Evie was there to tutor walks in on them, and in a split second decision Evie and the mystery woman go on the run to avoid being tied to the murders.

𝗬𝗼𝘂'𝗹𝗹 𝗟𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗜𝗳 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲:
*Wrong place, wrong time
*Thelma & Louise (with a twist)
*On the run
*Mystery with a twist

𝗠𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀:
This was an interesting read, I wast too sure what to make of the genre. Its a bit thriller with a bit of literary fiction. The author obviously has talent with words, even if her style was not my preference.
I was captivated by the mystery of it all, and the events while on the run. The relationship between Evie and Jae. The twist wasn't that twisty, but the dark secrets leading up to the twist are what made the story. The chapters where short and easy to read. I did use some audio book for parts, and the narrator was great as well.

#KillerPotential

I figured this out in the first few chapters but hoped I was wrong and would be surprised at the end... I was not. There was so much potential in the storyline but too many clues at the beginning.

*Provided a DRC (digital review copy) from the publisher for review. All opinions are my own.

Killer Potential is a Thelma and Louise-style road trip romance, but it didn’t work for me. The plot was so far-fetched that I had to suspend too much disbelief. Everything felt a little too over-the-top or convenient, and because of that, I never really connected with the characters.

There were a few sweet moments in the love story, and I could see what the book was going for emotionally, but it just didn’t land. The characters’ choices didn’t feel real, and I kept getting pulled out of the story because I couldn’t buy what was happening.

If you’re into chaotic, dramatic escapes from reality, this might still hit the mark for you. But for me, it was hard to care when nothing felt believable.

Thank you to William Morrow for a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch is such a wild debut novel, and I loved how unique it is. I don’t think going in blind is a bad idea, but I do think it is important to know that this has literary fiction vibes in the way it makes you think, but also quite a few violent moments. The action is strategically placed throughout the story and the shocking beginning was just a start to the spiral this book takes you on. It is a thrill ride while also being rather introspective, and I enjoyed getting to know these characters better though I can’t say I actually found either of them all that likeable.

I really enjoyed the audiobook, but I thought the pacing was off a bit. Kristen Sieh & Daru Oda did a great job bringing Evie and the mysterious woman (who we later learn the name of) to life, but I had to slow the audiobook down a bit to find the sweet spot of where their narration sounded the most streamlined. The plot is definitely a bit out there, so you do have to suspend some disbelief, and there are flashbacks that sometimes come at seemingly inopportune times that slow things down a bit. They did add more depth though and I loved this quick read that I was into from start to finish.

Read this if you are looking for: A compelling female protagonist, LGBTQ+ representation, and an adventurous read that takes you across the US.

Audiobook Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

2.5/5 ⭐️
A struggling SAT tutor finds the bodies of the parents of one of her students, as well as a woman who seems to have been kept under the stairs by them. They end up going on the run, afraid that no one will believe that they are not responsible.

This one started a little slow, picked up once Evie and the mystery woman get on the road, and then tragically bad. Not like Evie's fate was bad. Like bad in the sense of why is this the ending. The third part felt super rushed and also randomly kept switching POVs even though the book had not done that before that point. The last chapter (maybe two) also went through at least a year within one chapter of here's what happens next. It was just weird! And the way it ended just made the rest of the journey feel pointless.

I also thought this would be more of a 'let's clear our name' suspenseful book, but it is more of a fugitive situation. It is not even like Bonnie and Clyde where they go on a crime spree. I had high hopes for this one, but just felt disappointed. The more I keep thinking about it as well, it moved my opinion from a 3 to 2.5.

No beach bag this summer will be complete without a copy of Killer Potential. It's an absolutely wild ride from start to finish and watching it all play out was a blast.

What should have been a typical day wound up changing Evie's world. She pulled up to the Victors' Beverly Hills mansion ready to give her usual Sunday SAT tutor lessons, but instead found her employers brutally murdered -- and a woman tied up in a closet. As Evie attempts to free the woman, they're both spotted and instantly go from unfortunate bystanders to the prime suspects to fugitives on the run.

From there the book goes on a cross-country tour as the pair hightail it out of town and attempt to both avoid capture and somehow find a way to prove their innocence. Oh and the woman? She refuses to speak. As the highway mile markers drag on, Evie does her best to break through the woman's shell; they're now in this together, they need to trust each other.

Killer Potential is the perfect weekend read and will be an excellent beach read! It's bursting with twists and turns and had me flipping the pages at a rapid-fire pace. So, so fun!

Thank you net gallery for the advanced copy of this book. The reviews made it sound like a Thelma and Lousie type story, but it was more like the movie Parasite. But really, no one has web cams? The story is hard to believe, and the characters are unlikeable.

Page turning debut novel! Killer Potential presents Evie who makes her living as a SAT tutor. She stumbles upon a murder at one of her client's house. She also discovers a female being held in the mansion who becomes her "partner in crime". Evie decides to run and becomes the chief suspect in the murder.

The story takes the reader through different parts of the US as she and her new friend run from the law. They steal, hide and slowly get to know one another. The author does a great job with the action in the book which is never ending! Throughout the book there is a lot of humor, reflection and spunk. I enjoyed the read and would recommend it to anyone liking thrillers, action and adventure. Thank you Netgalley for the chance to review this book.

A Thelma and Louise type thriller about Evie Gordon (a SAT tutor ) gets caught up in a murder investigation. The first 2/3 of this book were a slowwww burn, but the final 1/3 really tied everything together . I would read from this author again!

Spot on social commentary with a swift moving plot that kept me going until the very end! I love a road trip with a twist!