Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > The Murder After the Night Before

If Katy Brent writes a third brilliant book I’m going to declare her an auto-buy author, because I loved this book almost as much as I did her 2023 release, How to Kill Men and Get Away With It. Though the two books are as different as night and day, they’re both flavored with Brent’s distinctive feminist prose and sharp, satirical sociocultural commentary.

This book is smart, thoughtful, emotionally provocative, and morbidly funny. Molly Monroe wakes up one morning after a work party with a strange man in her bed. She doesn’t remember much of anything from the night before. The guy’s name is Jack and he tells her he rescued her after he found her crying and wailing but not able to tell him why somewhere near his house in Vauxhall the night before. He brought her home in an Uber and just stayed with her because he was afraid she’d choke on her own vomit. She’s fully dressed. So is he. She feels fine, except she feels mostly dead from a hangover. He leaves her his number in case she needs to get in touch with him and she reluctantly goes into work, despite the strange looks and weird name-calling she gets from people on the way.

But that’s just the start of a few weeks of the weirdest and most heartbreaking weeks of her life.

The sociocultural commentary is hard and fierce in this book: social media and how it automatically focuses on fetishizing and shaming females who obviously are out of it when they are unknowingly filmed or papped, wives who automatically go after the other woman when they should go after their husbands first, best friends who scream at one another over their habits instead of just automatically helping, and mostly all of the men who dismiss and deride women whenever they have the chance of taking an out.

Katy Brent has more talent in her little finger for straddling that fine line between satire and mockery than most authors in the business. It would be easy for her to dip a toe fully into blaming men for everything, but Brent fully acknowledges that women can sometimes be just as awful. Internal misogyny is a beast and sometimes even the best of women can succumb when they’re weak.

It was brilliant, quick-witted, and sharp. Watch out for TW/CWs, please.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Dark Comedy/Murder Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Satire/Suspense Thriller/Women’s Fiction