Psychological thrillers are a favorite genre of mine and I wanted to love Kill, Sleep, Repeat, but for me it missed the mark.

Charlotte Jones is a flight attendant. It’s not a job she particularly enjoys, but it makes her other job easier. For fifteen years, she’s flown around the world, eliminating the most unsavory who’s money and power allow them to cheat justice. In another world, one could appreciate the vigilante justice dispensed by Charlotte and her co-assassins. However, that was lost in translation for me because Charlotte is a sociopath and she killed long before she became a hired assassin.

Murders, spree killings, kidnappings, cartel hits…all good stuff, but for me, the delivery was lukewarm. Charlotte’s always methodical, matter of fact, and planning her next move… meaning, the next time she gets to kill.

JC Warren is a psychopath, stalking, kidnapping and keeping women as his ‘wives’ until he tires of them… and now he has Charlotte in his sights.

Charlotte’s real life includes a husband and two teenage daughters who are little more than props for her. I felt sorry for Michael, her long-suffering husband. At first. Her past includes a mother who abandoned her, and a police officer father killed in the line of duty shortly before Charlotte became a mother.

JC hints at his old-money family, which gives him the freedom to be a predator. I never got a good grasp on JC. Psychopaths are hard to define even in fiction, but a sadistic nature accompanies his warped sense of right and wrong.

Charlotte carries this read and there were several missed opportunities when suspense could have been amped up, but she always retreated into her internal thoughts and the moment was gone. Despite being a sociopath, I expected more emotional reaction from her, especially when she found out to whom she was married to, but even that seem tempered. Shaken by the discovery, to me, she was more indignant than hurt. She was smart. She was calculating… and she’d been fooled. However, when she spoke of her love for Michael and how it made him special, I nearly rolled my eyes into another dimension. He was someone she’d tolerated, manipulated and ignored. Charlotte Jones didn’t love anyone.

Told from Charlotte and JC’s alternating points of view, this well-written story has a good premise and spot on plot twists, but with the retelling of the story, many times it reads like a journal with little showing.  With Charlotte’s flat personality and JC being just plain nuts and out of step, I never felt any sense of urgency or suspense… no pop. It’s a good story that for me, fell short.