Honey
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
The darkly comic killer debut novel of 2026.
PICKED AS A BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR BY VOGUE, ESQUIRE, MARIE CLAIRE, THE NEW YORKER, STYLIST, ELLE AND GLAMOUR
'The blistering thriller taking the literary world by storm' VOGUE
'Dark, thrilling and undeniably hot' GLAMOUR
'The entertaining (and quietly damning) read you'll need to kick off spring' ELLE
'Honey might be the most anticipated debut novel of the year’ ESQUIRE
'It's just so clever' LOUISE O'NEILL
'Impossible to predict' ERIN KELLY
‘A beautiful, relentless novel’ ABIGAIL DEAN
'Wow, basically' HARRIET TYCE
'Worryingly relatable' SOPHIE DUKER
'Rich, hilarious and shocking’ JEN SOOKFONG LEE
The first time, Yrsa doesn’t intend to kill.
But the Cambridge professor sitting opposite has manipulated her friend, stolen her research. When she flicks the bee into his Sanpellegrino, she thinks he’ll get a nasty sting.
Then he’s dead. And Yrsa, who – let’s face it – has been bored for a while, is alive.
It’s a sweet feeling, finally having some control.
Comic, sexy, addictive, unpredictable, Honey is about the not-always-righteous path of taking justice into your own hands.
The essential next read for fans of Butter, Yesteryear, My Sister the Serial Killer, Fundamentally or Boy Parts.
‘Yrsa serves up the unhinged hot girl homicide I didn’t know I needed’ SOPHIE DUKER
‘Juicy, dark, addictive, and truly clever. Yrsa is the antihero we've been waiting for’ SILVIA SAUNDERS
'A marvel of a novel, a story that breathes beyond its pages' ORE AGBAJE-WILLIAMS
'A twisted comeuppance story … Wow. Think Fleabag' KIRKUS
'The hotly-anticipated debut … a dark tale which throws light on the intersections between politics, race, sex, violence and love through the eyes of a female serial killer' MARIE CLAIRE
About the author
Imani Thompson is a British writer with Jamaican heritage. During her time studying Sociology at Cambridge University she was published in The Mays and won the Vogue new writer’s prize. She wrote Honey while working as a bookseller at Daunt Books and is now working on her second novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thompson debuts with the scintillating tale of a disillusioned Cambridge University PhD student who goes on a killing spree. Yrsa is at an impasse ("It must have happened gradually, subtly, her life becoming this tedious"). She struggles to contain her boredom with teaching and her disdain for her privileged students, like the one who claims her lecture on intersectional feminism is too woke. Meanwhile, she's floundering with her dissertation on Afropessimism and women's liberation. The plot kicks into gear after she learns her best friend's research has been stolen by her lover, a married professor named Richardson. Not long afterward, she witnesses Richardson being stung by a bee and neglects to offer help as he goes into anaphylactic shock and dies. Yrsa then begins identifying other "bad" men to kill, such as her former lover and classmate, a white man who fetishizes Black women and admits to joining his friends in devising a ranking scale for the women they've slept with ("Black girl magic, 20 points!"). The homicides revive Yrsa's energy for her dissertation, until she receives an anonymous email reading, "I know what you've done." Thompson adds intriguing layers to the sordid thriller plot, such as accessible descriptions of the complex sociological theories of Saidiya Hartman and Stuart Hall, and the story includes a shocking revelation about the origin of Yrsa's killer instinct. There's a staggering level of depth to this pitch-perfect satire.
