Member Review

Honey, the debut by Imani Thompson, introduces one of the most unlikely serial killers I have encountered in fiction: a PhD student at Cambridge. Yrsa, bored with the monotony of teaching, research in sociology, her mother, and men, discovers an unexpected thrill — murder. After unintentionally killing a professor who had slept with her friend and stolen her work, she realises that she enjoys the act. Rationalisations spring up to justify what she did, and she cannot wait to do it again. Killing becomes an addiction, each one perfectly justified in her thought process, until a conflicting truth forces her to question her actions. But has any addiction ever been grounded in reason?

Honey is a complex novel with a complicated protagonist. Yrsa is difficult to like: highly intelligent, physically appealing, and possessing a dark sense of humour, yet abrasive in her interactions. Her one act of kindness — keeping an old woman company — stands in stark contrast to her otherwise thorny nature. The supporting cast is less memorable, with the probable exception of Blake — the elderly woman — who impresses in the limited space she gets. Thompson’s narrative style is demanding and hard to get into, but her depiction of university life is sharp, satirical, and laced with academic references and social critique. Yrsa’s descent into compulsion is unsettling, and Thompson places her in a difficult position toward the end, only to finish it off abruptly and ambiguously, leaving the reader unsatisfied.

However, Honey is a daring debut that shows tremendous promise despite its flaws, and I will be curious to see where Thompson goes with her next.

I am grateful to HarperCollins UK for the digital review copy of Honey through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.