I Am Not A Serial Killer

Amazing character work, but mid story

This book tells the story of a sociopathic teen (John) obsessed with serial killers. We get to know the inner workings of his mind when a serial killer strikes the small town where he lives. John is conflicted between admiration and years of systems ensuring that he acts normally. It also has a supernatural twist around the midpoint of the novel.

I find the story itself is pretty mid, with a midway twist and climactic ending, but there isn't a lot more to the story. This may be due to who is the narrator (a sociopathic teen who lacks empathy and any emotion). I personally would have taken the supernatural part out to let the story more grounded and probably scarier. John felt already scary, but if it had happened in a more realistic context I would have shat my pants XD.

But the story is not the selling point of this book. The main point of reading this book is getting to know the main character John. The character work done by Dan Wells is amazing, on several points in the book I actually feared John and his thoughts. I don't have any experience interacting with people diagnosed with sociopathic tendencies, but somehow this book felt real.
I found really interesting to crawl into John's mind since his mind is so different than mine, a truly amazing experience.

All in all, this is a great book, just for John's character, and it is not very long and can be read in a few sittings. That's why I would recommend it.

Edit:
In retrospect the supernatural twist halfway through wasn't so bad, It actually makes the final climax scarier. Just wasn't expecting that direction and it pulled me away, but it wasen't as bad as I thought.