I’d seen Killer Potential on a list of debut novels for 2025 in Red Magazine. Given it involved a tutor to the rich and famous (and I’ve recently met someone who provides such tutors to pop stars and film stars!) and the main protagonist shares a name with one of my daughters, I was delighted to be granted an advance review copy by Net Galley. Here’s the blurb:

“Decisions were made: I made them. Violence was done: I did it. Crime scenes were fled: I fled them. People were hurt: I hurt them. Someone was loved: I loved them. Not everything I did was bad. Just most of it.
A scholarship kid with straight As and massive potential, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she’d be someone.
But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as a private tutor to the children of Los Angeles’s super-rich.
Everything changes when Evie arrives at the Victor family’s lavish mansion for her weekly lesson to discover, not the bored teenager she expected, but pure carnage: the bloody remains of Mr and Mrs Victor sullying their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help from within the walls of the house.
Within moments, Evie and the woman go from bystanders to suspects to fugitives.
Suddenly at the heart of a nation-wide manhunt, Evie finds that her mysterious companion, who refuses to speak, has quickly become the most important person in her upside-down life. Meanwhile, the press runs wild with Evie’s story – anointing her the new Charles Manson, a blood thirsty ninety-nine percenter looking to start a class war.
Evie is – finally and disastrously – someone.
Droll, dark and deeply insightful, Killer Potential is an edge-of-your-seat break-neck ride, a queer love story, and a darkly funny critique of the horrors of late capitalism and how the stories we’re sold about our potential can shape the course of our lives.“

Ooh – I really enjoyed this one!! It twists and turns at such a speed – and you’re not sure what’s going to happen next.

I liked Evie, and could see the situation she was in, trying to pay off student debt by being a SAT tutor. She’s a similar age to my eldest daughter – but I didn’t feel like an old fogey reading the book – it kept me totally engrossed and desperate to read the next chapter – which is always the sign of a good book!

Having made the decision to flee the crime scene that she’s stumbled upon, with a random person who had been tied up in the walls of the LA mansion she was tutoring at, everything snowballs from there. The young women need to keep on the run and not be found – and they set off on a road trip.

The book is split into three distinct sections – but I don’t want to describe why or how – as you need to ‘live’ the book. Whilst I did sometimes questions Evie’s decision making – it was also easy to see how she could get swept up in everything and for her story to take the route it did. Overall an excellent debut book.

Killer Potential is out this Thursday, 20th March 2025, so not long to wait! A big thank you to the publishers and Net Galley for my advance review copy.