Seven years ago, Morgan Slaughter put his father in prison for the horrific torture and killings of fifty-one women. Despite this, the public has always suspected that Morgan is a killer, just like his dad, a suspicion that isn’t
helped by Morgan’s autism and erratic trauma responses. When Morgan is forced to participate in a new documentary about his father, and as his mother becomes increasingly hateful and volatile when the cameras are turned away, Morgan becomes fixated on discovering the identity of his father’s last victim. In this quest, he is joined by Felicity Keating who knows the full extent of Morgan’s involvement in his father’s crimes and has their own reasons for wanting to solve the case of Jane Doe.
Despite being a big horror lover and generally kind of a morbidly curious person, I am not a true crime fan at all, and You’re No Better does a great job of illustrating why. Morgan’s childhood is traumatizing enough, but he is continuously retraumatized by the media circus and true crime content that surrounds his father’s crimes, watching and rewatching videos and podcast clips about his father and peoples’ speculations about himself as a form of self-harm (self-harm via spreadsheet—oddly relatable btw). I think AJW does a good job of highlighting that the media/true crime community are more directly responsible for all the stuff that goes down in this book than Morgan’s trauma alone. I’m not here to judge people for enjoying true crime because I think for a lot of people it serves a similar purpose as horror does for me, but I’m glad to see books like You’re No Better and Notes on an Execution confronting the harm done by the true crime genre.
I was absolutely rooting for Morgan even though he is a pretty difficult character, because I think it’s easy to see parts of yourself in him. I’ve been an angry kid—sometimes I’m an angry adult (if we consider 20 to be adult)—and when you’re neurodivergent I think the bar is lower for how much bullshit you can tolerate all at once, so I can’t hold it against Morgan when he lashes out. I’m glad to have some coping techniques, some of which are healthy-ish (LOTS of time on the stairmaster) and some of which are not (hair pulling and skin picking, which I am actively trying to quit), but there was a time when I didn’t have a way to cope other than to freak out or shut down completely. I also definitely do not have the level of trauma that Morgan has, but I’ve gotten fixated on that question of “Who would I be if I didn’t experience that trauma? How much of me is me and how much of me is a collection of trauma responses in the shape of a person?” Morgan’s experience of being trans is very different from my own, but it feels true to him and I’m sure others will relate to it.
I don’t think I connected with this book as much as I’ve connected with AJW’s others. Partially, I think that’s because this is really more thriller than horror and thriller isn’t my genre as much. The genre also just results in more action and less interiority / focus on character relationships, which is why I don’t enjoy it that much and something I found lacking in this compared to The Spirit Bares Its Teeth or Compound Fracture. I enjoyed it and the story was engaging, but I didn’t really connect with it emotionally so it was just a good read rather than a great one.
AJW is absolutely an auto-read author for me and I always look forward to seeing what he comes up with! Beast // Warden sounds more up my alley so I look forward to hearing more about that next year.
Thank you to Andrew Joseph White and Peachtree Teen for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!
Happy reading!
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