REVIEW: One Killer Night by Trilina Pucci
Dear Trilina Pucci,
One Killer Night had a really great start and I had high hopes when I began reading. It certainly has a very fun meet-cute. Goldie is in Walmart picking up more fake blood for her sister’s Halloween party. She’s dressed in an inflatable T-Rex costume and she meets a handsome man who looks a bit like Damon from The Vampire Diaries. (Hence, they go into each other’s phones as “Rexy” and “Damon” even though his name is Noah.) Goldie ends up inviting Noah to the Halloween party so he has to make an emergency costume out of a floral sheet. No doubt he was an interesting looking ghost.
They spend most of the night together and begin the process of falling in love.
What have you been doing your whole life?”
She touches the end of her hair so delicately I’m not sure she knows she’s doing it. But I can’t stop noticing.
“My whole life? How much time you got?”
All night. All week. Whatever works.
She smiles wistfully. “I’m a hopeful writer who’s working on working as a florist. I have an interview next week.”
That’s the best description of unemployment I’ve ever heard. She should definitely stick to writing.
There are parts of that first night where things could have gone wrong and Goldie is worried that maybe she’s being set up but every time things could go wrong he does exactly the right thing to make her feel comfortable and safe – and desired.
He’s perfect. Literally perfect. I take it all back, which only further proves that there must be something horrifically wrong with him.
I narrow my eyes, now even more smitten and humbled.
“Are you a serial killer?”
He shakes his head. “No, but I know someone who knew a guy.”
This is more true than Goldie realises at the time.
Presumably because when they met, Goldie was dressed as a T-Rex, he also calls her “Killer” for a lot of the book, but it’s clear early on that Noah is hiding something and may not be who he says he is.
Goldie is white and has auburn hair and pale skin. She was adopted as a baby by a Black family. She has been deeply loved and always included but she’s thinking about looking for her birth parents. As she gets older she’s realising there are parts of her history she would like to know. She’s also trying hard to break into writing and uses this as an opportunity to submit a story to a magazine. Noah is a graphic designer with dreams of designing sports shoes.
Noah explains his mother died in a car accident and he’s otherwise alone. He doesn’t like to talk about her or his history much. He is very close with his best friend, Chase, who becomes deeply smitten with Goldie’s sister, Evie but that attraction is not shared even a little bit. Chase is that kind of obnoxious, outspoken and secretly sweet guy who is often a lot of fun to read about. He is extremely loyal and lovable like a naughty puppy but he’s also cocky and annoying at times and some of this things to come out of his mouth make Noah (rightly) cringe. His immediate confidence that Evie and he are destined to be together rubs Evie the wrong way and they never really move past it.
Interspersed among the sections with Goldie and Noah are parts of a story from “years prior” at Camp Weonoke. I found these sections somewhat challenging, particularly in relation to the motivations of the characters depicted and their actions. It’s clear that Noah has something of a link to these events but exactly what is obscured for most of the book.
The first part was fun; I did believe in the romance and I enjoyed the banter and connection between the various characters – including the bromance between Noah and Chase. But as the book progressed, the serial killer part of the story took center stage and that mostly didn’t work for me. I suppose there is many an homage to slasher movies where the characters do irrational things to forward the plot but at this point:
I’ll tell him later.
I lift Princess so we’re little eyes to big eyes as I say, “How about you don’t almost get me killed anymore since I’m the one who buys you the expensive cat food.” She meows again, and I scowl, adding, “Also, let’s keep this between us. I have a feeling our boyfriend would be really pissed off if I told him I never locked the door and almost got us skinned and worn by some psycho.”
I needed to take a break from the novel and regroup. Goldie’s actions here were just nonsensical. She’d been though a very scary situation and she told no-one – not even her sister. That just made no sense to me.
After a break to read another book, I came back to One Killer Night hoping for more of the bits that I enjoyed at the start but unfortunately there were more silly decisions and a fair amount of bait-and-switch which either didn’t feel all that coherent to me. I am a sucker for a rescue story and I guess that’s what I’d been hoping for when I said yes to the novel but there was less of that and more of a slasher-movie-in-a-book and I’ve never been all that big on those kinds of films. I’ve watched them and even enjoyed a few but they’re not my go-to entertainment.
There was one part where a secondary character ends up in hospital and I found the medical information and that whole section pretty unbelievable.
Perhaps I was just the wrong audience for this book. It has a current rating on Goodreads of 4.4. I thought there would be more chasing and working together to escape danger than there was. I didn’t enjoy the silly decisions which put the characters in more and more danger and the ending made me roll my eyes. Fans of slasher movies might get the vibe much better than I did.
Would I read more from this author? Yes, I think so – there were things I liked in the novel, particularly around the main romance itself. Will I read the second book in the One Killer Night series? No.
Grade: C-
Regards,
Kaetrin
