Review: The Murders of Molly Southbourne (Molly Southbourne #1) by Tade Thompson

4/5 Stars

The rules are simple.
If you see a girl who looks like you, run and fight.
Don’t bleed.
If you bleed, blot, burn, and bleach.
If you find a hole, find your parents.

 So yeah, here we go. For those of you who aren’t at all familiar with the premise:

For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she’s been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.
Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

Needless to say, this novella is a bit of a doozy. Molly leads a pretty sheltered life, obviously, and while her parents are fairly integral in her younger years, you don’t really get to know a ton about them until the last few pages (which give you the OOOOOOOOOH moment of the story). Up until then, it is life filled with the need to survive, along with a murderfest of duplicates that only intensifies when Molly reaches her teens.

I knew from reading Thompson’s ‘Rosewater’ that I was in for some superb writing and an original story. What I didn’t expect was to constantly keep coming back to this novella for more. It had some sort of hold on me and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. If you are looking for a creepy, downright horrific novella to set your nerves on edge, check it out.

I mean, come on… Could you imagine seeing another You come out of a hole in the ground and straight up want to murder you? Not to mention when there are multiple… GTFO.