I Bet You’d Look Good in a Coffin - Kitty Collins #2

 

I Bet You’d Look Good in a Coffin is the second mystery thriller featuring lightly psychopathic angry woman Kitty Collins, channeled by author Katy Brent. Released 10th June 2025 by HarperCollins on their Harper360 imprint, it's 368 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. 

This is a *blackly* funny tongue-in-cheek hormonal chick-lit murder spree which is about half "I love Lucy" and half Jeff Lindsay's Dexter. There's some mean girls vibes with a cast of Sloane Rangers whose days center around high end luxury lifestyles and ultra-venial superficiality. There's a cat amongst the pigeons however, in the form of homicidal (literal) man-killer Kitty, who pencils in the occasional homicide between parties, jet-setting, and dates with her BFFs and her lovely reportedly normal boyfriend.

She just wants to be left alone, but between her mum's upcoming nuptials, and targeted attacks from a revolting misogynist online who -really- needs to be censored, surprise parties, and travel, her schedule is getting a bit overfilled. 

For content/trigger warnings, there are a number. There are long, extended, explicit, on-page descriptions of violence, body horror, s*xual assault, dismemberment, corpse disposal, drug and alcohol use, skullduggery and actual mayhem. The language is unapologetically brutal and direct. Writing/spelling/word choice is British English, but won't pose problems for American readers in context. This is an author who has clearly put in the work and imagination necessary to come up with actual workable methods for disposing of corpses (it's impressive, maybe the most impressive thing about the book). 

The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 9 hours 27 minutes and is expertly read by series narrator Victoria Morrison. She has a well modulated, classically trained light alto voice and does an excellent job with the upper class RP cut-glass accents of most of the characters. Her male voices are a trifle nasally, but the majority of the male characters are (literally) short lived cameos, so that's not a problem. 

Three and a half stars, mostly because some of the humo(u)r comes across as trying too hard to be exuberantly funny and manages to hit uncomfortably creepy most of the time. It works well enough as a standalone, but with 2 books extant in the series currently, it would also be a good choice for a binge/buddy read. Recommended, with caution for explicit content. 

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.