*The author includes on her website the following warnings about the content: ” . . . graphic depictions of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, and substance abuse.” I will also add fatphobia and “school shooting” to the list.
Rarely do I include a publisher-provided synopsis because I often find them either vague or pumped up to sound like the last best-selling smash hit in the same genre. But Reine’s synopsis is spot on:
It’s a smoky autumn morning when Kimber Clark gets the alert: her kindergartner’s school is on lockdown. She’s still drunk when she joins other parents outside the police tape, but not so drunk that she can’t pick up details: Zack Linzy, a high schooler, opened fire in the school cafeteria, killing four people. But that’s not possible. Zack Linzy is a freak, a boy who assaulted Kimber’s daughter, and Kimber killed him with a shovel two days ago.
The police are looking for the school shooter in the wrong place, and the real killer might get away with it. Kimber can’t tell the police they’ve got the wrong suspect without showing them where she buried the body. No — she has to solve a school shooting, absolve her daughter’s abuser, and make sure the real killer comes to justice. All without getting caught for the murder she committed.
Author S.M. Reine noted immediately for fans that She Killed Him First is nothing like her urban fantasy series (which I love!). It’s incredibly realistic, a deep dive into the shoes of someone who is incessantly drunk. Typically, I can’t stand memoirs and fiction about alcoholism because it just feels like this person is constantly drinking. However, Reine is able to convincingly, and even sympathetically, enter the mind and body of an alcoholic. The way Kimber thinks she can do certain tasks while drink because she feels more focused, the way she loves her daughter but also feels that her child behaves like a selfish animal. All these thoughts and emotions are given space to feel valid, but there’s also room for readers to realize Kimber’s perception of herself is off, and that her daughter is responding to untreated trauma and an unstable family.
The other parent, Kimber’s husband, leaves the home and texts occasionally. He’s camping with friends or he’s in his cabin working remotely, away from his “fat ass” wife and the daughter he claims he was tricked into having. The relationship is so convincingly toxic without making Kimber or her husband seem like caricatures.
Even more convincing is twenty-four year-old educator Felicia Freethy. Felicia was the co-teacher (or was she the mentee?) of the kindergarten class that Kimber’s daughter attends. During a school shooting, which is the catalyst for She Killed Him First, the kindergarten teacher is killed, making Felicia believe she’ll be the replacement. Although Felicia doesn’t use any mind-altering substances, you’d swear she did. She seems to think she’s the co-teacher, but other staff at the school refer to the teacher as Felicia’s mentor, suggesting Felicia doesn’t understand her role.
She’s also easily influenced by her mother, a gun-toting former model who bullies Felicia, and her boyfriend, police officer Brandon Boyle. I swear I knew Felicia and Office Boyle. It was eerie. Felicia is a blank slate twenty-something who knows she’s too pudgy for her mom and that her boyfriend likes fondling her breasts in a way she finds uncomfortable. No one listens to her as she tries to perform her way through life satisfactorily. Officer Boyle is the face of every man you don’t want to meet. He’s like to take a dump with the door open, be handsy when she’s saying no, and pushes Felicia into carrying a gun to protect herself after the school shooting. He’s the cop you’d never want to encounter. He’s the cop who’d be fired for exchanging sexual favors for getting off with a warning — that sort of guy.
The entire novel is set in Nevada, and Reine, who lives in the state, captures it perfectly. The smoke from California fires cause people to wear filtration masks. Conservative residents and gun lobbyists push for teachers to be armed in schools, demonstrating the politics of the state clearly. I never forgot the pervasive environment nor what the population demographics would look like. You don’t forget where you are. Because the novel is set in the last couple of years, Reine’s characters will mention Trump, and I think back to 2020 when Nevada seemed to take forever to count votes in Trump vs. Biden.
Felicia’s and Kimber’s stories collide when Kimber accuses Felicia, who has claimed she saw who the shooter was, of being a liar. How could Felicia have seen Zack kill four people in an elementary school when Kimber murdered him and hid the body two days before the shooting? Tension mounts as readers wonder why Felicia would lie, what benefit is there. How does it all fit together? And will the real shooter kill anyone else before he’s caught while police continue to look for a teen who is already dead?
An excellent read from an endlessly talented author.
Grab the Lapels 
What an interesting concept. How do you tell the police that they have the wrong guy because you killed him? HA! Talk about conundrum!
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I truly enjoyed this book, and I think it’s one you would like, too. Reine never has let me down!
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… I’m sold.
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I’m glad! Reine is an excellent writer.
Also, I’m currently listening to The Family Plot by Megan Collins, and the synopsis made me think of you.
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Oooh yes. Adding that one to my TBR.
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I started She Killed Him First last night and stayed up too late reading it so I blame you. 😆
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Seriously, every Reine book does that to me! I get so invested! She’s on Twitter a lot and talks to fans, so if you want you can follow her there.
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Wow, this sounds like quite the page turner! 🙂
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Yes, it is! I thought I had it figured out at one point and then was wrong and then did a mental twisty-turny and was set back down again!
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I love how you describe the cop. He’s That Guy! lol. Great review with lots of fun character descriptions 🙂
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You know EXACTLY who I mean, right?! I feel like everyone in the U.S. has to know who he is, which adds an element of menace to the whole novel.
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Most definitely!
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I worry about America. I worry that violent death has been so normalised in popular culture that your whole society is blind to just how unusual and indeed debilitating that is. To the extent that gun culture and race hate are making it impossible for your democracy to function properly and for you to have non violent relations with the rest of the world.
And yes, I think this book is symptomatic of that.
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If I understand correctly, Reine wrote this book while her whole family was in lockdown, which they did for much longer than the rest of us because they all have asthma. It’s quite dark, and I feel like she captured the essence of America right now. All the distrust between characters isn’t due to COVID, but it has that same vibe of us all eyeballing each other suspiciously.
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Whoa, that synopsis took a real left turn! There’s almost no way I’m going to read a book centred around a shooting in a kindergarten but I am very curious about the conclusion to this.
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Yes, I have a few readers with young children whom I don’t imagine would read this novel. I remember both you and Anne @ I’ve Read That talking about how much you enjoyed Ducks, Newburyport, even relating to the part during which the mom ruminates over school shootings.
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It’s unfortunately an inevitable fear now when you have children and I think something I’ve been afraid of since the Sandy Hook shooting which was even before I became a parent. I think about an interview I read with one of the teachers who told her students that she loved them while they hid because she wanted that to be the last thing they heard. Gah, I still tear up about that! I just can’t let my brain think on it all too long.
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I REMEMBER THAT INTERVIEW, TOO! She was so worried about saying it because you can’t say stuff like that to your students, but if they’re going to died, she might as well tell them how she feels and let it be a good last thought. What a tough, horrible, piece-of-crap conundrum that she even had to have that train of thought.
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That does sound familiar now that you say it. I mean, I get that teachers shouldn’t necessarily go around telling their students they love them all the time but I can’t imagine anyone taking issue in this circumstance. Most teachers I know really do have so much love for the kids they work with.
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Hot diggity this sounds like a good read. Lots to unpack here. I love the way you describe these characters, they are already coming to life for me. Also, I frequently think my children behave like selfish animals, even though lots of other people claim they are angels haha
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I still remember the first time I heard you say (or was it written?) that your kid was an asshole and I about died laughing. This is a great book, and I think you’d really like it.
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Although I am definitely not going to read a book where an adult is drunk while looking after a young child, because it would stress me out, this does sound like a good premise!
Though all the gun stuff would stress me out as well. I find the idea of anybody ever having a weapon on a school or unversity premise horrifying, let alone a teacher in charge of a classroom! If someone told me it was an expectation for me to carry a weapon while teaching I would absolutely quit my job. I can’t fathom the idea that someone would want the person teaching their children to be armed.
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The gun stuff stresses me out, too. Oddly, I don’t think that deep down I hate guns, it’s just that they’re so easy to get with no training, and then you can carry them all over the place. I’m sure you’ve seen photos from the U.S. of a person in a grocery store with an assault rifle slung on their back. Even though people can legally do that in some states, there’s no way the police aren’t getting called, because why would you need a war weapon at the store if you weren’t going to use it? Gun people feel harassed, as if you could compare it to every time you drive you get pulled over so the police can make sure you have a license. But, you know, read the room. If you’re not going to use that, why do you have it besides attempting to scare people by exercising a right to the very max?
I would quit if I had to carry a gun, too. In the story, though, it’s interesting how teachers felt that they could see this killer in the school and would have stopped him before anyone died. I think we like to imagine being heroes without considering the reality of the execution. Mark Wahlberg, I believe it was, took a lot of flak for saying that if he’d been on the plane that crashed into the Twin Towers, things would have gone differently. His imagination doesn’t match the obvious reality.
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I agree with Loulou, this whole description sounds much too stressful to me! I bet you figured that, though, didn’t you? 😉 But I’m so glad you enjoyed it so much.
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Yeah, I kept thinking about my readers who are moms of school-age children, or someone like Lou who is a pediatric nurse and sees all sorts of horrible things, and thinking this book is not appropriate for all readers. S.M. Reine has younger children, so I wonder what it was like for her to write this topic.
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