JoeyPinkney.com Book Review
Fat Kills
by K.Reid
(K.Reid Productions)
5 out of 5 Stars
K.Reid’s Fat Kills has The DMV (DC, Maryland and Virginia) written all over it. It’s more than being “blown” or “siced”, K.Reid has worked hard to include neighborhoods, restaurants, clothing stores, regional websites and so much more.The world as told as through the eyes of the main character Mia Nickole Rose is full of music, memories of “The Metro” newspaper and chicken wings and mumbo sauce.
Working in downtown D.C. by day and moonlighting as a singer at night, Mia is conscious of her weight almost as much as she is cognizant of the effects of the recession that has rocked the globe. Nothing a perfectly rolled joint and some late night sitcoms can’t smooth over another day in the economic jungle.
Speaking of financial woes, Mia is no stranger to the struggles we all face. Student loans, garnished wages and helping parents who are struggling to keep their dream home equals little to no money for Mia to pay the everyday bills. A chance email with the promise of money for simply meeting up leads to Fat Kills becoming a veritable Urban Thriller.
Mia is statuesque, voluptuous and bodacious. In her mind, she is fat and not “phat”. She constantly gives herself pep talks and confirmation of her greatness whenever she’s about to step on the stage to sing and even when she walks into a place with a bunch of people. A twist of fate has her at the beck and call of a murderous doctor who treats people that struggle mentally with how the are treated because of their weight. That same doctor, known as Professor, kills the people who ridicule overweight people as payback for private school bullies beating his son into mental retardation.
K.Reid gave Mia a sharp sense of humor and a profound love of music. This makes Fat Kills doubly entertaining. The personal thoughts and comments that Mia injects into Fat Kills are classic. Sometimes her humor is subtle like Seinfeld, other times she is openly funny as Comic View used to be. Just like a conversation with an unintentionally funny friend, Mia catches you off guard with her dialogue and thought processes.
Mia’s musical palette ranges from the Go-Go bands native to the D.C. area to Bjork to everything in between. This gives Mia’s character a more realistic feel as she weaves her way through the plot twists of her literary world. Throughout Fat Kills, K.Reid blesses Mia with some of the deepest, most comprehensive playlists for her iPhone. It quickly becomes obvious that K.Reid did not just put a bunch a random songs together. The author really put her heart and soul in making sure the songs happening throughout Fat Kills fit perfectly and realistically with whatever is going on in Fat Kills.
The one thing that was a pleasant surprise about Fat Kills is that it was unpredictable. Each plot twist was unexpected, yet when things went in a new direction it made sense. Without giving away the juicy details, I thought Mia was going to lead me through a typical hood story. She didn’t.
Instead, Fat Kills was written well enough that I actually went through the myriad of emotions that experienced as she slowly went through a mental breakdown. It took more than marijuana to mellow out the mangled murder mystery Mia experiences. From not knowing the true identity of the psychopath who controlled her every move like a demented puppeteer to having to sing and perform during heinous acts of torture and death, Mia suffers a jarring mental breakdown that will shake even the most emotionless reader.
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