Book Review: It Takes Monsters by Mandy McHugh

Victoria Livingston Tate has had enough. While seemingly the happy and successful-in-her-own-right wife of Warren Tate, the CEO of Livingston Corporation, she’s long chafed at being the second in command of what should have always been her company. Alas that her dying, sexist father chose to bequeath its leadership to her husband instead of to his own perfectly capable eldest daughter. Victoria pretended not to mind, focusing on her own lucrative accounts and career instead, but the resentment never fully went away.

Now Warren wants her to take an indefinite sabbatical from their company so she can focus on getting pregnant and raising their children. He even draws up the paperwork to file with HR without consulting her. Something within her snaps, as she decides that the only way to win her independence and her company back is by killing her thoughtless husband:

Not out of some ill-conceived notion that women belonged on top; as much as she believed in the feminist quest for equality, murdering Warren didn’t fall under that umbrella.

 

It was the injustice of the situation: the fact that one man could sweep in with his dick-swinging energy and demand she bend a knee. An order to give up her body, her freedom, her choice. If Warren had broached the topic beforehand, maybe Victoria would’ve considered his point of view. As a courtesy. She wasn’t unreasonable. She wasn’t a monster. And even if she wasn’t one hundred percent convinced that motherhood was right for her, she would have been willing to listen.

Having resolved to free herself permanently of this overbearing man, she begins to plan. Being a fan of true crime podcasts and series, she meticulously determines how best to get rid of him with no one being any the wiser. So it’s a rude shock when her neighbors in the ritzy Kent Wood Manor estate throw a wrench in her works by abruptly moving forward their Harvest Gala to the night she’d set aside for his murder. 

Never mind, she thinks, her plans are flexible enough that she can still kill him right after. But nothing goes as predicted. Warren is gruesomely murdered at the party, leaving Victoria to hurriedly hide all the things she herself had purchased for the same purpose.

And at first, she genuinely can’t believe her luck. Even when she becomes the police’s prime suspect, she knows that she’ll be found innocent: wanting someone dead doesn’t mean she’s actually responsible for killing him, after all. When she starts getting weird and threatening messages from someone who goes only by X, however, she begins to fear that she might end up being framed for a crime she very much did not commit.

As the pressure mounts, she’s unsure where to turn or who to trust. Her family life wasn’t the healthiest, but perhaps her sister Teagen, fellow survivor of their childhood, would understand?

Livingston sisters against the world.

 

Those days were distant memories, at least for Victoria. Perhaps they were never there to begin with, simply long-gone wishes she’d convinced herself were real. She understood that there were pieces of herself that she refused to share. Her relationship with Warren had muted those vulnerable parts of her too[.] She’d forgotten what it felt like to trust another person. Could she open up to Teagen? Spill the dangerous words and dark imaginings?

 

No. But the temptation was there: to connect. To believe.

 

To break.

Victoria has few options in this breakneck thriller of betrayal and mayhem, as she learns exactly how much Warren had been hiding from her and the number of enemies he had amassed, some of whom would be just as happy turning on her as on him. Mandy McHugh has written a suspenseful novel very much rooted in emotional realism: it’s hard not to root for Victoria even as she’s plotting terrible things. Being raised by chauvinists and narcissists is never an easy background to overcome, and Victoria is very much a product of her upbringing. Competitive and capable, this compelling anti-heroine will do anything to get out from under the thumb of not only her terrible husband but also his devious murderer. With twists till the very last page, this is the kind of book that’s incredibly hard to put down.