d_s_t_e's Wattpad Reviews

The Bitch You Killed by longtimegone [Mystery/Thriller]

This is a mystery/thriller story about a girl named Kloe Matthews. She was the most popular girl in school and she knew it. She also knows that she was cruel and heartless, that she manipulated and hurt people, and that she gave many of them more than enough reason to hate her. And the reason this entire paragraph has been written in the past tense is that one of them hated her enough to put a bullet in her brain. She's dead. But that's not going to stop her from telling her story... or from getting her revenge.

One thing I really enjoyed about this story was the overall premise. A dead narrator seeking revenge on her murderer, giving us the backstory of how she came to be the person that she is -- or was -- and always keeping the reader guessing at the identity of the one who killed her and why he or she did it. It definitely wants a prospective reader want to give the book a try.

There are also some really get twists. There were a lot of places in my notes where I wrote things like: "Ah! I was not expecting that part" or "Woah... this is more serious than I expected". Things like that really catch and hold a reader's attention.

I liked the narrator in places, but there were a few things that I disliked about the way that she was telling her story. For example, even as she recounts the events of her past, she is very often calling them cliché. I found that a little annoying but, more importantly, I remembered something I was told in a public speaking class I took: never start a speech by mentioning the fact that you're not a good speaker or that the speech isn't very good because the audience will hear you and start to believe it. Think about it, if you're having a character suggest that things the author came up with might be kind of cliché, the reader might start thinking so, too, even if they might not have otherwise!

I also disliked that the narrator sometimes gave away the essence of what was going to happen right before telling the thing that happened. I think it worked out fine in a couple of places, but I worry that it took a little something away from the suspense in other places.I think the narrator has a lot of potential to do even more for this story than she's already doing. She has a strong voice that shines through in the prologue and first chapter that I think could have a unique and interesting effect if it was played up even more in the subsequent chapters. One thing I thought this story could definitely take advantage of is the idea of having an unreliable narrator. This is when the character telling the story is not completely trustworthy, perhaps because he or she has a faulty perception of past events or perhaps because he or she is actually knowingly lying to the audience. You might think of Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Telltale Heart", which is told by a mad man. He thinks he's telling exactly what happened, but the reader can easily see that he is crazy.

One thing I wondered is why the narrator is telling us her story. Since she speaks directly to the reader in the prologue, we know that she's aware. In the same chapter, she tells us herself that she is manipulative. Wouldn't it be interesting if the narrator had an ulterior motive for telling the story? Maybe she's trying to prove that she really wasn't all that bad, revealing all the while that she truly doesn't see even now how terrible some of her actions were. Maybe she's trying to turn us against her murderer. There's really a lot of fun an author could have with this kind of device, especially in a story like this one.

I would also like to know where the narrator is telling this story from. We know that she is dead, but is she a ghost wandering the earth to get that revenge she craves? Is she stuck in some kind of afterlife? If so, is she trying to escape or sitting back comfortably and telling this story in order to manipulate someone else into securing that revenge for her? While we are hearing about the "past", I wonder if we can't take a break every now and again to hear about the "present" -- what it's like being dead, how her plans are formulating, how she feels looking back on her life from beyond the grave.

I think all of this would be awesome, but, of course, they are just ideas. These are some things that could be done, but I would really enjoy anything that gets us more into this unique narrator even as the story of her past unfolds.

There were also some smaller things, like errors and typos that could be fixed and moments that didn't seem completely believable. I think it could use an overall editing and touchup, perhaps with help from someone else.

This is an ongoing story, so we don't yet know who the murderer is or how Kloe plans on getting that revenge, but if you're interested in finding out, you can add it to your reading list now, get caught up, and wait for the next update. Hopefully there will be more great twists before the ending is revealed.

** Published in November 2014 **