Today I’m delighted to be sharing my stop on the blog tour for An Ethical Guide to Murder by Jenny Morris. Thank you to Random Things Tours for including me on this blog tour & to Simon & Schuster UK for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thea has a secret. She can tell how long someone has left to live just by touching them.
Not only that, but she can transfer life from one person to another – something she finds out the hard way when her best friend Ruth suffers a fatal head injury on a night out. Desperate to save her, Thea touches the arm of the man responsible when he comes to check if Ruth is all right. As Ruth comes to, the man quietly slumps to the ground, dead.
Thea realises that she has a godlike power: but despite deciding to use her ability for good, she can’t help but sometimes use it for her own benefit. Boss annoying her at work? She can take some life from them and give it as a tip to her masseuse for a great job. Creating an ‘Ethical Guide to Murder’ helps Thea to focus her new-found skills. But as she embarks on her mission to punish the wicked and give the deserving more time, she finds that it isn’t as simple as she first thought. How can she really know who deserves to die, and can she figure out her own rules before Ruth’s borrowed time runs out?
Publication Date: 16th January
CW: murder, death, grief, classism, sexism, harassment
My Thoughts:
An Ethical Guide to Murder took its inspired concept and spun it into a thought-provoking story.
This was a book that had a brilliant concept – suddenly having the power of life and death at your fingertips and being able to use it to balance the scales. It challenges everything we know about death and spirals into a million questions. That heightens the significance of having a great protagonist to follow. Thea is relatable and messy, caught up in her own mundanities and challenges. She is at times unlikeable and complicated. However, she is passionate and driven, wanting to achieve her goals. She is thrown into a unique situation and suddenly gifted this power beyond comprehension. How do you handle holding lives in the palm of your hand?
It is a muddy quagmire of morality, which Morris makes you stay in to contemplate what is on the page. She builds on this great idea wonderfully, really living up to the title and delving into the ethical implications of Thea’s newfound ability. It kickstarts a whole debate about who deserves to live and what lengths we make to go to right a wrong. Morris explores the destructive power of vengeance, particularly when it becomes an obsession. Thematically, this is such a rich book. It is emotionally fraught with a wonderful meditation on loss and grief. In fact, it caught me by surprise a little with how heartfelt it was. I really enjoyed the turns the plot took and how they explored further ethical dilemmas associated with this power, without giving anything away. Morris has some surprises up her sleeve with some jaw-dropping twists.
An Ethical Guide to Murder brings an imaginative concept to life with an enthralling and impressive debut from Morris.
A Short Book Lover 
2 thoughts on “Blog Tour: An Ethical Guide to Murder”