Book info

• Title Codename Villanelle
• Author Luke Jennings
• Year 2017
• Genres Thriller, Mystery, LGBT, Crime

She is the perfect assassin. A Russian orphan, saved from the death penalty for the brutal revenge she took on her gangster father's killers. Ruthlessly trained. Given a new life. New names, new faces - whichever fits. Her paymasters call themselves The Twelve. But she knows nothing of them. Konstantin is the man who saved her, and the one she answers to. She is Villanelle. Without conscience. Without guilt. Without weakness. Eve Polastri is the woman who hunts her. MI5, until one error of judgment costs her everything. Then stopping a ruthless assassin becomes more than her job. It becomes personal.

Thoughts

I was very keen on reading this after watching the TV show, and I was fascinated by the similarities and the differences. This was originally a set of short ebooks that has then been gathered together to make the first of a trilogy about Villanelle and Eve.

The book is brilliant, captivating, glamorous, gruesome, intoxicating and horrifying all in equal measure, right up until the last few pages. The cliffhanger is just really annoying, it feels like it doesn’t end.

I get that if you’re writing singles and you want them to lead from one to the next then you can do this, but as a standalone book, this doesn’t really work, because there’s no conclusion - not even a pause really. This is like the opening chapter.

But don’t let that put you off because all it means is you have to go straight on and read book two. Which I will!

Rating: 4 / 5