Title: Killer Instinct
Author: S.E. Green
Series: Standalone
Genre: YA Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller
Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Release Date: May 6th 2014
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Source: eARC received from publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review

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She’s not evil, but she has certain... urges.

Lane is a typical teenager. Loving family. Good grades. Afterschool job at the local animal hospital. Martial arts enthusiast. But her secret obsession is studying serial killers. She understands them, knows what makes them tick.

Why?

Because she might be one herself.

Lane channels her dark impulses by hunting criminals—delivering justice when the law fails. The vigilantism stops shy of murder. But with each visceral rush the line of self-control blurs.
And then a young preschool teacher goes missing. Only to return... in parts.
When Lane excitedly gets involved in the hunt for “the Decapitator,” the vicious serial murderer that has come to her hometown, she gets dangerously caught up in a web of lies about her birth dad and her own dark past. And once the Decapitator contacts Lane directly, Lane knows she is no longer invisible or safe. Now she needs to use her unique talents to find the true killer’s identity before she—or someone she loves—becomes the next victim...


I went into this book loving the cover. I thought it was so eye catching and so original from a lot of the books on the shelves, I love the use of white space and I think that is what originally caught my eye and made me want to read it. Unfortunately I felt like this story lacked something for me, and I did not like it as much as I would have liked.

This book is about a young girl who has urges to hurt people, she is not scared of gore, she loved death and she finds a way of hurting people without scarring her conscience. Think Dexter. She only hurts people that harm others, and I feel like that is where most people will say they were lost on the enjoyment of this book because it did remind me of Dexter A LOT so that was something I had to get past in order to continue reading the book. But the other part that actually kept me reading was the fact that there was a serial killer named the Decapitator that was killing people every September and that killer starts to contact her. This is where things get interesting for me because i was really interested in who this person was and how they knew who she was.

The interest of the killer and the interest in who the killer was is where my likes ended. I felt like everything else in the book seemed a little over the top. Especially her family because it seemed too good to be true that her Mother and Step Dad were both part of the FBI so she could see crime scene photos and snoop around the case of the Decapitator. I also didn't see the point of her sister Daisey and why her character had to be labeled as a slut. From what we hear about her, it sounds like its true, but honestly her character had no real impact on the story itself therefore I wondered why her character had to be that way at all. It seemed unnecessary. I also felt like I had a disconnect with all the character including the narrator herself. When something happened I never really felt any kind of emotion so that made it hard to connect to any of the characters.

The reveal. This was the kicker for me. When we learn who the killer really was I wanted t throw the book across the room because, although I did not see it coming, it also made no sense what so ever. I felt angry at the end, i felt myself rolling my eyes and saying "really?" over and over again because the killer did not seem believable to me. AT ALL. that was the nail on the coffin for me, that reveal was the reason I gave this book 2 stars.