#Thriller #BookReview | The House of Killers by Samantha Lee Howe

About the Book

Killing Eve meets Jason Bourne in this nerve-shredding new thriller series simmering with obsession and espionage…

Serial killer Neva has been conditioned not to ask questions of the mysterious Network, to remain perfectly incurious and perennially cold-blooded. She must simply execute the targets they text her and live to bury the tale.

But then she’s tasked with terminating a fellow assassin and glimpses her own future in her colleague’s fate. When she leaves flowers on the gravesite, someone notices.

Agent Michael Kensington knows he’ll have his work cut out for him when he’s recruited by MI5 onto operation Archive to piece together patterns in cold cases.

Nothing could ever have prepared him for Neva…

An assassin obsessed with hell, a fugitive tortured by the secrets of her past, a woman destined to unthread him.

The House of Killers introduces a trail-blazing new voice in spy fiction. An absolute must-read for all fans of spooks past and present, from Bond to Bourne, Smiley to Polastri.

The House of Killers is…wow….just wow! As I sit here reflecting on the story, wow is the word that keeps popping into my head, especially when I try to think of non-spoiler ways to describe my reading experience.

What I Loved

The blurb describes the story as Killing Eve meets Jason Bourne and, though I have not read Killing Eve, I agree with the Jason Bourne comparison. Neva is like the female version of Bourne, and her story blasts off the page like a runaway train with nothing to stop it or even slow it down. The Network trained Neva and conditioned her to be an assassin until a fateful job of retiring a coworker causes her to break free from her conditioning and find her authentic self that she had long been conditioned to suppress. This revelation is the very moment the metaphorical train takes off from the station, and it is still out there twisting and turning as it picks up speed.

I love the language of the narration. Direct and engaging language held me captivated as I alternately found myself in Neva and MI5 agent, Michael Kensington’s heads, plus a few chapters told from support characters points of view. Usually, I would find so many narrators confusing and long for a story told in 3rd person, but Howe makes it work beautifully and uses it to keep me on my toes as I jump from car to car in this runaway train. The only issue I had with the narration is that the voices all sound the same. The plot indirectly justifies this, but I’m now entering the realm of spoilers, so I will leave it at that.

As Neva reconnects with herself, her character begins to blossom and develop very slowly and organically, like waking up from a long and deep sleep. I look forward to seeing further development in future novels as Neva’s story continues. Her layers have only begun to emerge, and I am fascinated to learn more as she discovers who she is.

To Read or Not to Read

I’ve kept this review short and sweet to hopefully entice you without spoiling this story full of jaw-dropping revelations that never stop until the pages do. Any thriller lover will miss out if this book does not find a way into their hands. Like I said before… wow…just wow!