[Williams] deftly swirls science fiction and domestic suspense plotlines into this fresh and unpredictable tale ... Imbued with a sharp feminist consciousness, My Murder cheekily invokes and subverts the conventional serial-killer-stalking-terrified-women plot ... My Murder shakes up the same-old, same-old conventions of every genre it touches and has a ton of fun doing so.
Williams performs a number of clever tricks with the narration, and not least of these is that sad-sack Louise is a consistently winning perspective. In the beginning, the writing has a comic pizazz — you can imagine Natasha Lyonne reading the audiobook — but it grows deeper, darker and more melancholy as the book goes on, the self-possessed wisecracking revealing itself, as it often does, as the defense mechanism of a lonely and disconnected soul ... The subtle science-fiction elements only serve to deepen this sense of alienation. Williams’s near-future world takes familiar technology and makes it even more pervasive and isolating ... one of those rare emotionally intelligent books that are also fun reads, and it even manages to perform two or three plot turns that are so masterly that they would make Ira Levin blush. You can read the ending as happy — or as existential horror, as I do — but in any case it’s a book that’s going to keep readers turning pages late into the night.
My Murder engages with a violent subject without gore, and probes how technology infuses our days and engages our attention, often without our awareness. The plot is certainly rich and appealing, but Williams’ layered considerations are even more compelling and yet never heavy-handed.
A clever speculative story of cloning and crime ... Though the tone is darkly comic, Williams poses provocative questions about cloning and resurrection, and she pulls off an intelligent murder mystery to boot. This creep-fest is acerbic and disturbing in equal measure.
A suspenseful, smart sophomore effort—a briskly paced story with charming characters at its core—Williams again imagines a near-futuristic, science-altered reality that offers an intriguing perspective on the push-pull of family and freedom ... Williams has delivered an intelligent, insightful murder mystery that illuminates her imagined world and our own.
