Rutabaga's Reads 2025: Part 1

Here is my first adult fiction compilation for 2025 (I’m aiming for two). This variety includes a novel that features triplet sister serial killers, a novel that features stylishly decorated cookies and a novel that takes place in Seoul, South Korea.

How I’ll Kill You (Mar. 21, 2023) by Ren DeStefano.

<This is a standalone novel.>

Identical triplet serial killer sisters have descended upon a sleepy town in the Arizona heat. They all have names on birth certificates, but they do not go by those names. They were abandoned as newborns with their umbilical cords still visible and no names. They were shuffled through the foster care system and mostly not homed together. 25-year-old Sissy is treated like the youngest, and it’s her turn to find a man, then make him want her and love her, so she can make him dead. She’s always been the one cleaning up her sisters’ messes. Sissy introduces herself with her fake ID as Jade Johnson. Both Iris and Moody take turns playing the married twin sister who goes by Lisa Canter. When Sissy lays eyes on the man she later learns is Edison, she knows he’s the one. She often daydreams of how she might kill him. Edison is a widower, and Sissy’s caught off-guard when she realizes he has a stepdaughter (Sadie). Sissy doesn’t plan to kill her, but schemes to become a trusted adult in her life, which will be especially useful when Edison is dead. What really gets Sissy is when she realizes she’s in love with her mark. Considering anyone outside of her sisters to be a friend or found family is the ultimate betrayal. And if her sisters, who’ve killed thrice apiece, so much as suspect she’s fallen for Edison, will they merely push her to kill him quickly and leave before six months is up? Or might they plot her burial site, too?

            In DeStefano’s adult fiction debut, readers delve into the mind of disturbed sisters. Told from Sissy’s perspective, hers is a struggle of sisterly loyalty vs. betrayal, dispassionate actions trying to hide loneliness and a desire for love. It’s easy for someone who’s grown up well to think, Pull yourself together! This is a psychological thriller and a dark romance, but it’s also something of a bildungsroman, with Sissy discovering what type of person she truly isn’t and the type she wants to be. This novel is clever and malicious, filled with sinister scenarios and messy clean-ups, self-sacrifice and the emotional pain of wanting what one cannot have. “How I’ll Kill You” isn’t for the faint of heart, giving readers twisted love that has them rooting for a psychopath.

            Notable lines: “His hands have built and carried and created. Mine have dismembered and buried and destroyed.” (Sissy, p. 87)

            P.S. I checked this one out from the library as my Blind Date with a Book back in February 2024.

How the Murder Crumbles (June 20, 2023) by Deb Sennefelder.

<This is the first novel in a series.>

“Put that in your icing bag and pipe it.” Those are some of Mallory Monroe’s famous last words to Beatrice ‘Queen Bea’ Wright, food blogger and town menace, before she’s found dead on her kitchen floor, flour around her body and a bloodied marble rolling pin nearby. Because multiple people witnessed Beatrice accusing Mallory and Mallory’s late Aunt Glenna of stealing a cookie recipe, including Detective William Hannigan, Mallory has become suspect number one. This affects her sales, her two employees continue to butt heads, she catches her (now ex-) boyfriend with another woman, and that woman, Aspen Leigh, has suddenly relocated to Wingate, Connecticut, is living in the apartment over Mal’s bakery (which is owned by Mal’s cousin Darlene), and has apparently decided Mal’s her one friend in town. That doesn’t make sense to her, either, but what does make sense is initiating her own investigation in order to clear her name. The deeper she delves, the more obvious it is that the killer may be whipping up another murder.

            In the realm of cozy, adult fiction mysteries, this is a solid entry. There are a few cookie recipes included at the story’s end, and Sennefelder bakes up a whodunit that’s tasteful and tastefully decorated with dashes of humor throughout. I would absolutely want to visit Mal, Kip and even Claudia at The Cookie Shop, though no Almond Meltaways for me, please. I much prefer chocolate! It’s not a highly remarkable story, but it has well-rounded characters and a steadily-moving plot. Mal should definitely leave investigating to the professionals, and, while I know she’s desperate to clear her name, the way she demands answers from whichever hapless person she’s decided is her next murder suspect is really off-putting. I don’t expect to continue this series.

            P.S. This library checkout was my Blind Date with a Book this month.

If I Had Your Face (Apr. 21, 2020) by Frances Cha.

<This is a standalone novel.>

Told from four viewpoints, this novel follows five young women making their lives in Seoul. Ara is a mute hairstylist; she’s been mute ever since she was the victim of a violent attack. Kyuri is the kind of beautiful that money can buy, working at a “10 percent” room salon (“a salon that supposedly employs the prettiest 10 percent of girls in the industry”), critical of herself, and utterly judgmental of anyone she deems ugly (which is most other women). Sujin, Ara’s roommate, is fixated on making her face beautiful so that she can work in a room salon like Kyuri. Kyuri’s roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage, is the only one of them to venture to America (on a scholarship) and has a chaebol boyfriend who’s definitely unfaithful. Wonna, a floor below the other four, is the only one who’s married and is preoccupied with becoming pregnant, expecting that her child will love her like her physically abusive grandmother did not. All struggle financially, even Kyuri, who hides it well. Miho, whose current life Kyuri’s envious of, states, “… but I was the first to come to America. Without being adopted, I mean.” Each young woman is navigating an uneasy life in an expensive city, but friendship knits them together.

In previous novels I’ve read, it’s a glittering, shiny Seoul, but this Seoul is unflinchingly hard and sometimes downright brutal. It’s still a world with disturbing, impossible beauty standards (and the plastic surgery debt to go along with it), ruthless social hierarchies and K-pop obsession. The characters can barely afford to live for today, much less plan for tomorrow. This is an insightful, contemporary story of sisterhood and female friendship, provocative and biting, powerful and gripping. I did not expect to be swept up in the compelling realism of the story. Cha’s writing doesn’t only shine light on economic inequity, but the effects of classism and patriarchy on these young women. These aren’t women from chaebol families. Like most of us, they are working-class women, trying to succeed in a harsh world. Physical beauty will fade, but novels showcasing universal human challenges like this will not.