Murder by Natural Causes

This was brilliant!
This was a really interesting take, and very cleverly executed! Kind of like the premise...
As soon as I started, this reminded me of Killing Eve, the BBC TV drama series. (Worth a watch, btw.)
A woman is hired to kill people, but not to make it look like an accident- even better, to make it look like the victim died of natural causes.
This was so clever, the deaths were absolutely brilliant!
The narrator was excellent, and I raced through it in just 2 days.

Cilla was picked as a young girl to be a recruit for the elite Academy 43. She is skilled in weapons and poisonings.

Cilla is now a contract killer. She specialises in dry kills. As in those that look like deaths by natural causes. She is able to get at victims other killers are unable too.. she operates under the radar but being so successful means her days could be numbered. She needs to find a way out of her current career..

Unbelievably, you find yourself rooting for Cilla despite what her career is. She is just a product of the state. The narrator of the audiobook brought the character to life. I laid listening to this on the beach. And unusually for me I didn’t fall asleep as I was invested in the story. The story was told in current and past storylines.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to see an ARC

Read this is you like:
✔️Characters who break the mould.
✔️ An insight into a usual job and a totally different lifestyle.
✔️Books with ambiguous endings.

What a fantastic audiobook. I was hooked right away. I was so intrigued by Cilla and her job as an assassin specialising in “dry jobs” where it someone is murdered in such a way where it looks like natural causes.
The author has a fantastic writing style and I kept looking forward to long commutes so I had a big chunk of time to listen to the book. The narrator is engaging and brilliant, really bringing all the characters to life and her accents were really believable too. I initially didn’t enjoy the chapters set in the past which explored how Cilla became an assassin, and really disliked the two week holiday back home she had.
It makes me sound like a psychopath myself, but I’d have preferred more chapters set in the present, with Cilla performing more assignments, because I thought the way she researched everything about the targets into order to come up with a natural looking death, was really clever and intriguing.
I have never met a character like Cilla and I really rooted for her and her aspirations. I loved the items she collected to show her autonomy, and with that ambiguous ending, I am sure never to forget her. Now, I am off to listen to the last chapter again for clues!

🎧Audio Book Review🎧

Murder By Natural Causes
Helen Erichsen

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

I absolutely loved this! It was quite different to anything I've read recently and I just couldn't put it down.

I adored Cilla, our main character. She's completely unremarkable in her outwardly daily life....but that's exactly what is needed in her line of work - a dry job assassin.

We follow Cilla in her present day life, working, part time, for Vlad - drug lord, club owner, impaler! - definitely not a man to be messed with.
On the side, she is able to take on jobs of her own but as things develop we see the lines becoming blurred.

I loved that Cilla, although completely invisible, she was the bravest, cleverest and strongest character I've read about in a while.

As the storyline unfolds, we learn of Cilla's childhood and education - born in a very communist Soviet Union, she was whisked away at a young age and trained at the specialist academy 43 where she excelled.
I really felt sorry for her missing out on a traditional childhood but given the status divide, certain areas of life were actually better where she was? It's a tricky one!

This was a complex plot but brilliantly written. I both read the book and listened on audio and loved them both.
The narrator was amazing especially depicting all the different characters and accents. It really brought the story to life and helped to add context to the plot.

The ending was one that leaves us wondering - no spoilers here - but it's a little ambiguous.
I'm really hoping that it's because there is going to be a sequel, but even if not, this is definitely an author that I'll be reading again! Brilliant read!


💕Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for my audio copy - this is my honest review💕