Would you move in with a man you suspect is a serial killer? Love Letters to a Serial Killer asks why so many women say yes

Tasha Coryell’s Love Letters to a Serial Killer is a gripping character study disguised as a thriller—and just when you think it’s about to go full Dateline, it pivots into something stranger, sadder, and, at times, even a little cozy. Yes, cozy.

The setup sounds ripped from a true-crime podcast: Hannah, a thirty-something woman drifting through life, starts writing letters to William, an accused serial killer awaiting trial. When he’s acquitted, she doesn’t just meet him—she moves in with him. Not because she believes in his innocence. She doesn’t. She just— can’t resist.

But unlike most serial-killer thrillers, Love Letters to a Serial Killer doesn’t rely on high-speed chases or shocking twists. Much of the book takes place in a kind of domestic fog: fast food runs, morning coffee, awkward meetups with other women who are similarly obsessed with William. There’s even a slow-burning mystery as Hannah tries to figure out if William could still be killing from jail, combing through clues with an amateur sleuth’s determination. It’s got a surprising touch of cozy mystery energy—if your cozy mysteries tend to involve deeply self-destructive protagonists and at least five bodies.

What makes this novel especially compelling is that none of the women chasing William are under the illusion that he’s a good man. Hannah, Dotty, and Lauren are drawn to him because he’s dangerous. Because attention from someone so brutal and charismatic feels meaningful, even validating. It’s painful to read, because it’s painfully familiar. As Hannah admits:

It’s pleasing to me, even now, that a man like [him] enjoyed kissing me. For all my feminist posturing, I can never fully get away from this desire to please men. I’m not even sure what it would look like to fully please myself.”

That’s the heart of this novel. Coryell asks, again and again: What has our society done to women that makes romantic destruction seem preferable to loneliness? Why do we believe so strongly in the redemptive power of our love that we’ll throw ourselves into the fire just to prove a point?

Coryell has written something rare here: a thriller that’s not just about who did it, but why we care so much—and what it says about us when we do.

Related Content

• Exclusive interview with Tasha Coryell (She Reads)
• Tasha Coryell: on falling in love with villains (Writer’s Digest)
• Prison letters and why women fall in love with men in jail (The Re-Engineered You)
• Letters from prison: lifting the lid on a system in crisis (The Howard League for Penal Reform)
• Writing to prisoners unlocks more than you would think (The Guardian)

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Now that Jack has been forced to reflect on everything he has to lose, he resolves to do better. He’s determined to spend more time at home with his family and repair the relationships that have suffered over the years while he’s been so focused on work. But as Callie’s behavior becomes increasingly bizarre, Jack realizes he has a lot more room to improve than he realized – and it might be too late to save his daughter after all.

For fans of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Push, and Baby Teeth.