Every summer when I was little, I spent a week at summer camp. I remember the year they tried to show us how to skip rocks. I’ve never been good at it, and to this day, I can’t get the rock to bounce more than once. But looking back, it strikes me that skipping rocks is like life. If you drop a pebble into a calm body of water, you will see ripples expanding from the center. Skipping rocks, to me, is more like life, because every action you take, and every decision has a ripple effect. Then, you move on to the next, creating another ripple effect.

At its core, Killer With A Heart is about one event having a ripple effect that changes the next decision with its own ripple effect. This novel begins with two best friends trying to figure out how what was supposed to be an easy heist went wrong. That’s where the novel begins, but not the story. That started with the death of the main character’s (MoJo) older brother. With his death, MoJo’s future was sealed, despite his mother’s attempt to save him.

There is a well-known phrase, evil begets evil. While true in this case, Killer With A Heart is also much simpler. Revenge begets revenge. In the Bronx of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, with gangs and the mafia all around, revenge was a way of life. When MoJo’s brother died, he vowed revenge on everyone responsible. The ripple effect of his brother’s death and MoJo’s single-minded goal of revenge would change the lives of many.

MoJo is a young man who looked up to his brother, and his loss shapes the rest of MoJo’s life. He is driven, incredibly intelligent, and trapped by his own decisions. Once he started traveling down the path of revenge, he found it was one he couldn’t step off. Nor did he really want to. For the first half of the book, you see only hints at the heart MoJo denies. He is cold, a killer. It is only when tragedy hits that the reader finally begins to understand how deeply he really feels. MoJo becomes the true bad boy. Not just making decisions from a need for revenge but from a place of true hate. He becomes the man who would burn down the world, and it is only his best friend Nicky who keeps him under control.

Nicky is MoJo’s best, and one of his only, friends. Growing up in a mafia family, he too was headed down a path that would affect many people. Above all, Nicky is steadfastly loyal. Nicky seemed to do his best to temper some of MoJo’s more extreme decisions, sometimes successfully, and sometimes not. But no matter what, Nicky stood behind his best friend. Together, MoJo and Nicky were able to conquer the world. Or, at least, the Bronx.

Killer With A Heart is at its heart an exploration into how your surroundings and your decisions affect not only your life but the lives of everyone around you. It is an exploration of how difficult life can be once the decision is made to head down one path versus another. JL Hill does a masterful job of portraying a cold and cruel man hell-bent on avenging his brother, only to smack the reader upside the head when tragedy hits later in the book. It is truly difficult for an author to create characters with such depth. Throughout this book, decisions are made, and actions taken, that in real life we would be horrified by. But in this book, with these characters, they seem almost like a foregone conclusion. That the reader can almost understand how MoJo thinks is a testimony to how well-written this book is.

There is only one real drawback to this novel. I found on occasion, that I was confused about whose viewpoint I was reading. There were a few times it felt like the viewpoint switched from MoJo to someone else without warning. It appeared to be subtle which added to my confusion. It forced me to go back a little bit to figure out what was happening and which characters were involved at that particular moment. This was not enough, however, to change my opinion about this novel.

I found Killer With A Heart to be one of the better novels I have read so far this year. The depth of the characters and the progression of the storyline felt natural and believable. The novel does have quite a few violent scenes so if this is a potential trigger, then this is not a book to read. Otherwise, I recommend this book, especially to those who are interested in reading books about 1970s New York, gangs, and the mafia, or just about how decisions can send you down a path that will only end badly.

Book Score: 8.2/10

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Review made Andrea Martin

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