2015 Reading Challenge: I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells

A book set in high school: I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells

Synopsis: 

John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it. 

He’s spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.

He’s obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he’s written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.

Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don’t demand or expect the empathy he’s unable to offer. Perhaps that’s what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there’s something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat---and to appreciate what that difference means.

Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can’t control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.

My rating: 5 out of 5

Sometimes I feel like I'm being a little too liberal with my 5 out of 5s, but this one really deserves it.

I already knew that Dan Wells was a horror writer, and the title alone is a good indicator of how gruesome the book is going to be, but I was still really thrown by just how spooky and unique this book was.

I've read generic horror before--almost everything by Michael Crighton, a few by Dean Koontz, and one by Stephen King--but this was something I'd never seen before: a horror story where the main character and hero is a sociopath with homicidal tendencies.

We all hear and read about sociopaths in the media, but I didn't realize how little I understood sociopathy until I read this book. Dan Wells knows what he's talking about, and it was mind-blowing to see how a character reacts to things when he literally feels no emotional attachment to those around him.

This book wasn't just original and spooky, it was actually very inspiring. It explores the struggle to practice self-discipline and to have decisions determine destiny, not the other way around.

And this is one of those where I was really glad to discover that it's the first of a series. This bookw as so good that I read it in one day, and I can't wait to read the rest of Dan Wells's books now.