Tynga's Reviews: serial killer

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Sunday, August 09, 2026

Review: A Little Bit Obsessed (A Little Bit Unhinged #1) by Chrissy Hopewell

A Little Bit Obsessed (A Little Bit Unhinged #1)

by Chrissy Hopewell

★★★★★

Read: August 3, 2026

376 pages

I did not expect to love this book as hard as I did.

I went in thinking dark romcom — vigilante brothers who hunt predators, a mafia princess who wants nothing to do with the life, forced proximity with a man who has absolutely no business being this attractive while committing felonies. And it IS funny. Genuinely, laugh-out-loud, tears-in-your-eyes funny. But underneath the humor is something with real teeth, and Hopewell never once lets the comedy undercut the emotional stakes.

Wes is the kind of MMC I will follow anywhere. He is meticulous, morally grey in the most compelling way, and so quietly devastated by his own feelings that watching him fall is like watching a controlled demolition in slow motion — everything precise and calculated until it's suddenly, catastrophically not. The way he cares for the FMC is unhinged and tender in equal measure. He will do objectively terrible things to keep her safe and then feel genuinely offended that she didn't protect herself better. His love language is surveillance and baked goods, and somehow that tracks.

Callie is the perfect match for him — not because she's fearless, but because she keeps choosing to stay even when her brain is screaming at her to run. She's spent years being invisible to the people who were supposed to see her, and Wes sees her with his entire body. Every tracker, every uninvited pie, every moment of fury when someone else touches her — it's the most intense attention she's ever received, and watching her fight against how much she wants it is agonizing in the best way.

Noah. Oh, Noah. The impulsive brother, the one who runs hot, the one everyone underestimates. He is so much sharper than he lets on, and the moments where his emotional intelligence cuts through the chaos are some of the best scenes in the book. He's getting his own story next and I am not ready.

The pacing is tight. The banter is *chef's kiss*. The spice is earned and woven into the emotional arc, never decorative. And there's a subplot involving competitive baking and an elderly woman that I cannot say more about except that it is one of the most delightful threads I've encountered in dark romance. Trust the pie. The pie matters.

This book made me laugh, made me clutch my chest, and made me genuinely sad when it was over. Five stars and I need book two immediately.

Tropes: stalker romance · vigilante MMC · forced proximity · captor/captive · morally grey · obsessive love · touch-her-and-die · he fell first · mafia adjacent · dark comedy · brothers dynamic

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by Tynga at Sunday, August 09, 2026

A Little Bit Unhinged, banter, captor/captive, Chrissy Hopewell, Dark Rom Com, forced proximity, found family, kidnapping, morally grey, Review, serial killer, stalker, touch her and die, vigilante Leave your mark

Monday, July 13, 2026

Review: Tourist Season (The Seasons of Carnage Trilogy, #1) by Brynne Weaver

Tourist Season (The Seasons of Carnage Trilogy, #1)

by Brynne Weaver

★★★★★

Read: January 21, 2026

400 pages

I went into Tourist Season completely blind and ended up with my heart in my throat, laughing at wildly inappropriate moments, and falling hard for a gardener-serial-killer in flip-flops.

This is a serial killer x serial killer romance set in a small coastal town that leans all the way into the spooky-tourist-trap vibe. Harper is the town gardener, the soft, quirky girl who talks to her plants and feeds snacks to her pet crow, and also quietly disposes of “bad people” in a wood chipper and uses them as fertilizer. Nolan is the man who comes to town with a very personal grudge and a meticulous revenge plan, fully convinced he knows exactly who she is and what she did to him. I adored Harper. She looks like sunshine and pastel cottagecore, but her moral compass is sharp, and the way she protects her town and her old man, Arthur, is so fiercely tender. Nolan took me longer, but watching this very rigid, trauma-locked man slowly unravel around her, get possessive in completely wrong but delicious ways, and then have his entire worldview shattered was extremely satisfying.

The tone is my favorite kind of dark. The deaths are grisly, there is a lot of on-page violence and past trauma, but Brynne Weaver balances it with genuinely funny dark humor and a cast of weirdos that feel alive. There is a crow who eats human bits and says “pretty murder bird,” a murder-grandpa with Alzheimer’s who still has fangs, and a small town full of oblivious locals and true-crime “investigators” who are much more dangerous than they think. The romance slides from enemies and wrong-person revenge into obsessive partnership, with plenty of banter, consent woven into the dirty talk, some intense pain-and-pleasure play, and a couple of scenes that absolutely wrecked me emotionally without ever feeling gratuitous.

Plot-wise, it’s very engaged with identity, survivor’s guilt, and what you become when the world has already tried to consume your trauma once. I loved the way secrets are layered: everyone is lying about something, but not always for the reasons you expect. My favorite parts were the high-stakes scenes where that glossy, jokey tone falls away and you see how far Nolan will go to save Harper and how far she will go to protect the people she loves, even when she believes she’s already lost him. There is a near-death sequence that had my eyes swimming and a quieter hospital stretch that made me fall for them as a couple, not just as chaos gremlins with murder kits.

Important to mention: this is very much book one of a trilogy. You get a full, intense arc between Harper and Nolan, but the larger mystery and some pieces of their relationship are left unresolved on purpose. You are not walking away with a neat bow or a completely safe feeling; you are walking out knowing the real monster is still out there and that their story is far from over. Personally, I liked that. It felt like the right place to pause, even if it left my stomach a little twisted. If you need a perfectly wrapped HEA in one volume, you might want to wait until the series is complete. If you’re happy to dive into a sharp, bloody, darkly funny serial killer romance with a crow, corpse compost, and a heroine who refuses to be a perfect victim, Tourist Season is absolutely worth the ride.

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by Tynga at Monday, July 13, 2026

Brynne Weaver, dark comedy, Dark Rom Com, Review, secret identity, serial killer, small town Leave your mark

Sunday, June 21, 2026

Review: Sinners Retreat (Slaycation #1) by Lauren Biel

Sinners Retreat (Slaycation #1)

by Lauren Biel

★★★★☆

Read: April 19, 2026

366 pages

I went into this knowing absolutely nothing except "serial killers on a tropical island" and honestly? That's the only context you need.

Sinner's Retreat is the most unhinged premise executed with complete, deadpan commitment — and that commitment is everything. This isn't a book that winks at the camera. The murder resort activities are treated with the same logistical seriousness as any luxury retreat itinerary, and somehow that makes it funnier and darker simultaneously. Lauren Biel built a world with its own internal logic and never once apologized for it.

Kendra is a protagonist I didn't know I needed — sharp, competent, perpetually exasperated, and carrying a grief she doesn't know is built on a lie. Her dynamic with Cat is worth the price of admission alone. Cat is an absolute disaster of a human being and I would die for her. The way these two women orbit each other — Kendra's eye-rolls audible from space, Cat blissfully unaware — is comedic gold that somehow also builds into something genuinely warm by the end.

Ezra though. Ezra. The Abattoir Adonis who has been obsessing over a serial killer he's never met, who ends up sitting next to her on a plane without knowing it's her, who falls completely apart the moment she enters his orbit — he's exactly the kind of morally grey MMC I will follow into any disaster. And this is a disaster of his own making, sustained over an entire island vacation, held together by stubbornness and oxytocin and increasingly poor decision-making. The dramatic irony is merciless in the best way.

The spice is filthy and earned. The banter is sharp. The tonal balance between dark comedy and genuine romantic tension holds remarkably well throughout. And the ending — I was not expecting to feel things at a pumpkin carving scene but here we are.

If you're looking for a perfectly normal romance novel, keep walking. If you want something that makes you laugh out loud at things you probably shouldn't be laughing at while also being genuinely invested in whether two serial killers will figure their situation out — this is your book.

If you loved the Ruinous Love trilogy by Brynne Weaver, you will love this one!

Tropes: enemies-to-lovers · secret identity (double) · obsessive MMC · he fell first · found family · kinky spice · accidental (and not-so-accidental) cannibalism · forced proximity · touch-her-and-die · morally grey everything · dark comedy

Side note: Audiobook is duet narration with a full cast!

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