DNF at around 40%

For a book that's supposed to be about all men dying, it didn't half bang on about how wonderful men are.

It's been about a year since I read this but it was such a bad time, parts of it have stuck with me. One of the main POV characters (who felt a bit like an author insert) grieves her husband and I remember it being an extremely surface-level description of grief. The husband the character was grieving was one who "didn't know what to get her for Christmas, so bought her the most expensive thing in Liberty", every year for 12 years. He would go to a local bakery (Gail's, no doubt) to buy her coffee and a pastry, even though he much preferred tea and toast. Do straight women understand that they do not have to settle for the man they're with at 29?

The straights are not okay

I know there are several other aspects of what I did slog through that were hilariously awful, but thankfully my brain has discarded them. I don't know what book the people who wrote the blurbs read, but I now judge them and their books more harshly for giving this any acclaim. And to call it feminist??

Edit to add: oh yeah! The main? POV character has a small child (a boy, because no-one has daughters apparently) and delivered him by emergency C-section. The character expresses a lot of negativity about not delivering vaginally, and there was no refutation that I saw. It made me feel bad, and I can't get pregnant; so I'd say this is not one for anyone who has ever had a baby by the sunroof. Stalking the author's insta, I recall that she had never had a child herself, so I have to question her motives in writing all that.

DNF at 49%

I'm not the target audience for this, and that's fine. I did start feeling a little bit defective after yet another paragraph about the wonders of the female body being able to produce life, but I'm pretty certain infertility has never occurred to the author.

The idea of a government assassin going back to work after maternity leave is a good one. Unfortunately, I don't think the book quite lived up to expectations - certainly not for me.

Lauding Mumsnet as a wonderful community for mothers is certainly a take to hear in 2026. Even in 2018, when this book was published, it was the breeding ground of the rampant transphobia that's riddled the UK in the years since.

The repeated use of "Ruskies" was jarring, to say the least. It was used so much that it started to feel like the author was gleefully using a slur she thought she could get away with? (And for the removal of any doubt because this is the internet: Slava Ukraina)

The thing that broke the proverbial camel for me was the casual use of the most harmful stereotype about people with schizophrenia. People with mental illnesses, including all schizoaffective disorders, are significantly more likely to be victims of crime rather than perpetrators.

Bonus audiobook irritation: the narrator (who I strongly associate with the Sweetpea series) apparently cannot do a Scottish accent. There were moments of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen(shire?) but all in the one sentence. Yes, there's not that many of us and even fewer of us will ever listen to the audiobook of this but it caused me physical pain.

Then there's the weird morality going on. Because I've already mentioned the Sweetpea series, it's a handy comparison. Rhiannon Lewis has clear motivations for each of her murders, and at a certain point in the series (the books, not the TV show) it's explained that she received a traumatic brain injury, which plays a part in things. She kills because she believes it's for the greater good, in a way. Lex does it "for her country" and "the good of the nation" and it feels hollow to me.

Anyway. I'd apparently borrowed it from the library once before; clearly Asia Mackay just isn't the author for me!