Killing Eve Codename Villanelle Book Review

Book Title: Killing Eve Codename Villanelle

Author: Luke Jennings

My Rating: 2*

Publisher: John Murray

Publication Date: 2017

Genre(s): Spy thriller, Crime

Pages: 220

Format Read: Paperback

Goodreads:

She is the perfect assassin.

A Russian orphan, saved from the death penalty for the brutal revenge she took on her gangster father's killers.

Ruthlessly trained. Given a new life. New names, new faces - whichever fits.

Her paymasters call themselves The Twelve. But she knows nothing of them. Konstantin is the man who saved her, and the one she answers to.

She is Villanelle. Without conscience. Without guilt. Without weakness.

Eve Polastri is the woman who hunts her. MI5, until one error of judgment costs her everything.

Until stopping a ruthless assassin becomes more than her job. It becomes personal.

I have been obsessed with this show since it aired last year and with season 2 already halfway through in USA and on its way to the UK I thought I should read the book it is based on. If you’re into spy novels then this is the book for you but if you have seen the TV show and think it’s going to be anything at all like that then you will be disappointed. Like I was. I give huge kudos to the TV writers that made something so amazingly original and outclassed the book the TV show is based on.

Meet Villanelle: the sociopathic assassin part of a top secret organisation who kills important business men in a number of different imaginative ways.

Meet Eve: the British Intelligence agent who makes it her mission to find the assassin.

It is split into 4 long chapters and each chapter is heavily descriptive of each mission Villanelle completes as we follow Eve trailing behind trying to figure out who this assassin is and her obsession of her start to take form. The book gives a lot more detail into Villanelle’s back story and how she came to be the world’s most dangerous female assassin which was interesting to read about as the TV show never gave us any insight into her training. After finishing the book I found out that the 4 chapters were originally 4 different short stories which have been put together to make this novel and I think if I knew that and read them as separate stories I may have enjoyed it slightly more.

We don’t meet Eve’s character until chapter 2 and the reader can see her obsession with the female assassin start to take form. The one line that relates the most to the TV show is: ‘I’ll hunt her down. Whatever it takes.’, where Eve swears to catch Villanelle  no matter the consequences. Once Villanelle knows she is being chased she makes it into a game and the killing of one particular person makes this mission a lot more personal for Eve.

The book is written quite matter-of-factly but goes into a lot of detail about each mission Villanelle completes. There is not much emotion when talking about Villanelle which parallels Villanelle’s character; her mind and lack of feeling (sociopath). There are also a lot of sexual encounters throughout the book with both men and women which give Villanelle a brief high like her kills but she gets bored very quickly. The descriptions of the women characters were a bit repetitive throughout and the one thing that really bothered me about this book is that you can tell it’s written by a man from the constant referral to women’s breasts when describing all women characters.

I really hoped the book was going to be like the TV show in showing the obsessive dynamic between Villanelle and Eve but they do not even meet in this book and there is no overwhelming tension between them like in the series. Maybe the second in the series is better?

In my opinion if you want more of what the TV show offers I would stick to watching the series and forget about the book unless you enjoy reading spy novels.

I may have given the book a 2* but the TV series is 5* with Villanelle played by the extremely talented Jodie Comer and Eve played by the incredible Sandra Oh.