Self-preservation is a blood sport for Kirsten King's protagonist in A Good Person, a dark satire with cosmic twists about a woman's quest to find love at any cost. King's debut catapults readers into the "neurotic" psyche of one of modern literature's most audacious narcissists and follows her through a series of mishaps that land her in the middle of a murder investigation.
In her late 20s, Boston marketing associate Lillian is eager to settle down. She finds friendship challenging, thanks to her self-absorption and inability to tell the truth. Henry is the finance guy she is sleeping with and who, by an enormous stretch of the imagination, she is convinced is her boyfriend. Henry is "a man who didn't always hear you when you said the word 'no,' " and it is here that King superbly contrasts Lillian's perceived reality colored by desperation from the reader's comprehension of it. Delving into her inner life, A Good Person ponders the perils of loneliness and exclusion for someone always on the "outside, looking in."
When Henry suddenly dumps her, a furious Lillian puts a TikTok-generated hex on him. Shockingly, calamity strikes Henry later that night. To worsen matters, Lillian is wanted for questioning by the police, and hers isn't an airtight alibi. She concludes that only by solving the mystery of Henry's death can she establish her own innocence.
A screenwriter, King artfully spins a story that straddles pure comedy and the horror genre. Lillian, one realizes with mounting dread, has the makings of a true sociopath. A Good Person accelerates toward a brilliant finale as appalling as it is inevitable. --Shahina Piyarali