Title: An Ethical Guide to Murder

Author: Jenny Morris

Genre: Fiction/Crime

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: 16th January 2025

Rating: 4.5/5

Cover:

Summary:

If you had the power between life and death, what would you do? 

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?

Review:

An Ethical Guide to Murder has a great hook – a young woman who can not only tell when any person she touches is going to die, but can actually transfer years of life from one person to another. It is a fascinating concept and one that throws up all kinds of thorny ethical questions and concerns. I’m pleased to say that the delivery of the book totally lives up to its intriguing premise. It is an engaging, smart, sometimes funny and genuinely thought provoking read that I really enjoyed. 

Part of what makes An Ethical Guide to Murder work so well is main character Thea and how totally normal she is in most respects, despite her ability. She is flawed in the ways most humans are, quirkily funny and sort of chaotically charming in a manner that makes her uniquely powerful position incredibly compelling to watch unfold. I found her journey through trying to understand and then deciding on the moral boundaries of her powers really interesting and it is a book that cannot fail to make you question what you yourself would do in Thea’s position. I don’t want to give anything away but I will also just say that I think the ending is particularly well executed. Overall, An Ethical Guide to Murder is an entertaining, relatable and deeply compelling story of morality, honesty, culpability and consequence that I would absolutely recommend. 

★★★★.5 

Thank you so much to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for inviting me on this tour and organising it. I kindly received a copy of the book from the publisher. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

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