Review: 'She Kills Me: The True Stories of History's Deadliest Women' by Jennifer Wright

 A book on female killers technically has no right the be as funny as Jennifer Wright's She Kills Me is. I honestly laughed during this book and then felt bad, because my housemates knew I was once again reading about True Crime and must have sounded like a psychopath. Thanks to ABRAMS Image and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 10/26/2021
Publisher: ABRAMS Image

A powerful collection of stories about women who murdered—for revenge, for love, and even for pleasure—rife with historical details that will have any true crime junkie on the edge of their seat

In every tragic story, men are expected to be the killers. There are countless studies and works of art made about male violence. However, when women are featured in stories about murder, they are rarely portrayed as predators. They’re the prey. This common dynamic is one of the reasons that women are so enthralled by female murderers. They do the things that women aren’t supposed to do and live the lives that women aren’t supposed to want: lives that are impulsive and angry and messy and inconvenient. Maybe we feel bad about loving them, but we eat it up just the same. Residing squarely in the middle of a Venn diagram of feminism and true crime, She Kills Me tells the story of 40 women who murdered out of necessity, fear, revenge, and even for pleasure.

She Kills Me begins with an introduction that strongly refutes the idea that women cannot kill. It is something of a positive yet damaging adage that female serial killers quite simply don't exist, or that they always have extenuating reasons that meliorate their actions. She Kills Me is here to, in part, vehemently disagree with that. Ranging from queens leading their armies into battle to female concentration camp guards, Wright introduces us to a whole range of women who killed, for one reason or another. It is in the similarity and the difference between them that the real message of She Kills Me lies, I believe. Each of these women was in their own way underestimate because of her gender or damned by it. Wright also does not avoid the many ways in which race, ageism and attractiveness come in to play. A white, rich, beautiful young woman is much more likely to get away with murder than a woman of colour, or an elderly woman. Society and the justice system will respond very differently depending on the offender and it is worth highlighting this again and again until changes are made. 

She Kills Me is split into different sections, each focusing on a different "kind" of female killer. We get avenging angels, the rash of female poisoners trying to escape shitty marriages or trying to get that money, female killers for hire, female cult leaders, we truly get a whole buffet of murderers. Every woman gets her own little bio, usually a few pages long. It's not just serial killers, it is also women who only killed once, but Wright makes sure to give each women her due, both positive and negative. As a True Crime obsessive, I was familiar with quite a few of the women discussed, but many of them were also new to me, especially the non-European ones. (I know, what does that say about the True Crime I've been ingesting?) While She Kills Me is of course anti-murdering people, Wright doesn't shy away from contextualizing where necessary. Murder is bad, but killing Nazis in WWII shouldn't be scoffed at. Similarly, the Night Witches are simply epic. 

I absolute loved Wright's tone throughout She Kills Me. We're talking about horrible things, yes, but the lessons that are meant to be learned can be delivered in an engaging way. For some this may feel flippant, but I can honesty say that nothing in She Kills Me is disingenuous, mean-spirited or cruel. Naturally, when looking at killers, one is going to encounter topics that don't always fall well on an empty stomach. Each little biography is preceded by warnings about its contents, whether it is enslavement, cannibalism or other horrifying things. She Kills Me is definitely geared towards women, both in its humour and in its criticism. Men don't always come out of this looking great, but then how can they when misogyny is such a red thread throughout most of these tales? However, we're not "bashing men" here, Wright is just laying out facts with a strong dash of humour mixed in. What else is there left to say except: I wholeheartedly recommend She Kills Me to everyone with even a mild interest in True Crime or female killers in history!

I give this book...

4 Universes!

I very much enjoyed reading She Kills Me. Full of brief biographies of all kinds of women, from true monsters to avenging angels, you'll walk away wiser. And remember kids, don't murder, a divorce is cheaper!