Look, I wasn't expecting a book about an accidental hitwoman to make me laugh so hard I had to pause the audiobook in my library's break room. But here we are.
Finlay Donovan is a mess. And I mean that in the most affectionate, deeply relatable way possible. Her ex fired the nanny without telling her. Her book deadline is a distant memory. She literally duct-taped her kid's hair to her head to get her to school on time. This is the energy we're working with, people.
Then she gets mistaken for a contract killer at a Panera. Or wherever. The point is—she's discussing her thriller novel's plot with her agent, someone overhears, and suddenly she's being offered money to actually murder someone's husband. And because she's broke and desperate and honestly just trying to survive single motherhood, she... doesn't immediately say no.
Why Angela Dawe Makes This Whole Thing Work
I've said it before on the podcast: comedy is the hardest thing to narrate. You can't force funny. You can't oversell a punchline. The narrator has to trust the material and get out of the way while also—somehow—making every beat land.
Angela Dawe gets it.
Her Finlay is frazzled but not pathetic. Smart but not smug. She captures that specific exhaustion of a woman who is holding seventeen things together with dental floss and sheer spite. The internal monologue sections? Gold. Dawe delivers them with this dry, slightly unhinged quality that had me snort-laughing on multiple occasions. (Shirley was not impressed. She never is.)
The male voices are solid too—distinct enough that I never got confused about who was speaking, which is more than I can say for a lot of audiobooks. There's this one character, the love interest situation, and Dawe gives him this voice that's warm but a little dangerous? It works. It really works.
Comedy, Mystery, and a Body in the Trunk
Okay, so here's the thing about this book: it's comedy, it's mystery, it's domestic chaos, and it's got genuine thriller elements. That's a lot of plates to spin. And honestly, when I first heard the premise, I was skeptical. Accidental hitwoman? Sounds like it could get real gimmicky real fast.
But Elle Cosimano actually pulls it off. The humor never undercuts the stakes. When things get dangerous—and they do—it feels real. Finlay isn't some quirky protagonist who magically becomes competent at crime. She's in over her head the entire time, and that tension is what keeps the pages turning.
The mystery itself is tighter than I expected. I figured this would be pure comedy with a thin plot holding it together, but no. There are actual twists. Things I didn't see coming. NYPD Red 7: The Murder Sorority had a similar mystery structure, though it leaned harder into the thriller side and lighter on the comedy. Dawe's pacing through the reveals is spot-on—she knows when to slow down, when to let a moment breathe, when to punch through a scene.
The Motherhood Thing (It's Almost Horror-Adjacent)
I don't have kids. But I have friends who do, and I've heard enough stories to know that Cosimano isn't exaggerating the chaos. The duct-taped hair isn't played for cheap laughs—it's a symptom of a life that's genuinely falling apart at the seams. There's something almost horror-adjacent about the way this book portrays the relentless demands of single motherhood. The way no one helps. The way the ex is useless. The way society just expects you to figure it out.
It's funny, but it's also kind of brutal. In a good way.
Your Listen-or-Skip Checklist
If you want something light but not brainless, this is your book. If you're a fan of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series but want something with a slightly sharper edge, you'll love this. If you need a commute audiobook that'll make the traffic less soul-crushing, Finlay Donovan is your girl.
Skip it if you're looking for serious crime fiction. This isn't that. There's violence and some adult content, but the tone is firmly comedic. If you want gritty and dark, look elsewhere.
Also—and I cannot stress this enough—if you're a parent who's ever felt like you're one bad day away from completely losing it, this book will feel like a warm hug wrapped in a murder plot.
Continuing the Series? Absolutely.
Probably won't relisten immediately, but I'm absolutely continuing the series. There are more Finlay Donovan books, and after this one? I'm in. Angela Dawe narrates the sequels too, which is the right call. You don't mess with a narrator who nails it this hard.
My podcast listeners are going to love this one. It's the kind of book that's easy to recommend because it does exactly what it promises: it's killing it.
