Literary Review

Review: 'All of Us Murderers' by KJ Charles

Not everything that aches wants to be healed

Neil Czeszejko

22 Jun 2025 — 2 min read

Created with Midjourney

Few stories prove irresistible enough to make the reader ache to delay the inevitable. All of Us Murderers is one such rare find. Set in the Edwardian era, the novel follows twenty-eight-year-old Zeb as he’s invited to a distant relative’s estate, where a former lover, estranged family members, and horrors both sinister and increasingly gruesome await.

It’s a Gothic thriller wrapped in a mystery, pulsing along to the beat of a tender love story—a delicate dichotomy of logic and longing. True to Charles’ signature style, the novel builds from the inside out, creating fleshed-out characters that vibrate and bleed beneath the reader’s fingertips.

Charles takes her storytelling a step further here, offering a protagonist whose neurodivergence quietly shapes the narrative without ever defining it, allowing his inner world to inform the story’s rhythm in ways that feel wholly lived-in and unforced.

As with all things human, the way Zeb navigates reality frames not only his world but the course of his relationship with Gideon, never pulling focus from the story’s deeper cadence.

The care and groundedness with which his character is explored offer a breath of fresh air in modern literature, which so often trades authenticity for marketability.

This resistance to worn labels or moral binaries extends to other aspects of All of Us Murderers, from subtle critiques of the roots of British wealth to the murky ethics of its characters’ inner lives. It also embraces an exploration of sensuality that neither intrudes on the story nor bends to reductive notions of identity or desire.

And so, much of what twists and moves the tightly paced storyline stems from all that is buried deep, the hollow yearnings and cruel desires festering below the sheen of skin.

This produces a pulse that demands to be traced, a dull sensation that forces goosebumps to the surface. In their wake, humour, desire, passion, vitriol, and pure horror drive a descent into madness and reckoning.

The thrill of the drop wouldn’t be possible without the interplay of the story's many layers, or the tension between interpersonal dynamics and language's subtle manipulations.

All of Us Murderers is a delicious, wholly consuming tale—intricate yet immediate, shadowed yet clear-eyed. It's a rare story whose emotional, moral, and literary ambitions are fully realised, reminding us that clarity and truth are rarely the same thing.

An advance copy was provided by Poisoned Pen Press.