Killer Story

As a lover of mysteries and crime podcasts, I was excited to pick up a copy of Killer Story by Matt Witten. Petra, a journalism major, picks up fourteen-year-old Olivia for UCLA’s journalism boot camp. They quickly become close like sisters. Olivia gets accepted to Harvard and starts her own YouTube channel. Petra is shocked because Olivia shares her very conservative views including those about immigrants. Olivia is then found dead in her dorm room, killed by a lamp.

The police do not solve Olivia’s homicide, but a few years later, Petra, a struggling journalist who has gotten fired many times decides to try and find Olivia’s killer. It is easy to see that Petra is extremely desperate and although she claims that she really loved Olivia, it is obvious that she is only doing it to save her job at the Boston Curion. Her boss has given her two weeks to come up with a story and podcast otherwise she’s fired.

Although I loved the story, Petra made almost every person in the book a suspect whether she had real evidence or not. It seemed like she was recklessly ruining lives on her podcast just to get hits. Overall, the story was a really good one but the main character was pretty weak and scattered.