Constant Reader April 2026: Love Letters to A Serial Killer by Tasha Coryell

 

 

At roughly the halfway point of Love Letters to A Serial Killer the hysterical literary debut of Tasha Coryell Hannah the narrator of the book tells us "I thought about how limited we are in our conception of the word 'victim'.

This is a brilliant line for many reasons. The first and obvious one is that by this point we know Hannah is going to end up a possible victim of a serial killer. The second is we also know she's clearly starting to yearn for this to be an ambition. The third and most subtle is that its another line that describes Hannah perfectly: it seems like a deep thought but by this point we know she probably found it online and it sounded good because its pretty clear that she has no depth in her real life.

I'm not spoiling anything by that one because that's the first sentence of the novel:

I didn't plan to fall in love with an accused serial killer. Nevertheless, my wrists and ankles are bound to a chair and I can blame only myself.

This would seem to the start of all to many novels. Except one page later Hannah goes into the head of her former best friend:

"Don't tell me you didn't want this," Meghan would say if she could see me. "No one does what you've done if they don't find being tied up and about to die at least a little hot."

Meghan isn't wrong. I find no pleasure in the prospect of death but enjoy picturing the mourning of the masses. I want my name remembered, unlike the hordes of other women who have been brutally murdered and then forgotten. At the very least, I want a podcast in my memory."

In this Coryell unfolds the story of Hannah and as it does it makes it clear that this woman wants to be a victim of a serial killer because it’s the only thing in your life she can do that takes no real effort and she can't mess up. One of the funniest jokes of this book is that she basically screws that up as well.

Hannah thinks she is  a victim at the start of the book in the way that I suspect so many millennials – of which she no doubt is – believe they are going in. She blames the fact that when she graduated college with a major in English and political science with a German minor it’s the recession's fault she ends up working at a non-profit in Minneapolis. She really thinks that would be an easy job when in fact there's no sign she's ever been very good at it, spending her time scrolling social media when she's supposed to be working, and never writing a novel. She drinks to much and while she says going on dates with men who will never love here is not an equivalent crime to killing women, she truly believes in her soul her heartbreak is that equivalent.  The novel starts with her being ghosted by her boyfriend because she believes because she lacks sincerity, she naturally assumes he does as well. She thinks the world revolves around her and is upset that her best friend has found a boyfriend. She believes she has main character energy when she doesn't have any dimension at all

Hannah ends up tracking down Anna Leigh, as with everything else in this novel, by accident when she's trying to stalk her ex-boyfriend on social media. When she learns that Anna Leigh disappears she's naturally jealous of her because she resents her for her good looks and success. Anna Leigh is a law student in Georgia who has disappeared. Halfway through her morning she finds a true crime forum.

Before I joined the forum, I would've said that I consumed true crime as much as any other ordinary American woman, which is to say quite a bit. We were obsessed with our own impending deaths, imagining danger in even the tamest of scenarios. Do enough research and no where is safe, not the Target parking lot, not your apartment complex, not the running trail.

Hannah makes it clear she's different because she doesn't listen to podcasts or go to conventions: she's not one of those women. She ends up one of those forums and its clear when she talks to Meghan, she's late to the party. Then Anna Leigh ends up dead in a ravine. I hate the word ravine she tells us "It sounded like a word that was invented to describe a place where bodies were found. She ends up getting involved because a post she makes gets ten thousand shares. She vows to find Anna Leigh's killer "to know that I was capable of something." The idea that she in Minneapolis could do something that was happening in Georgia is ludicrous but we know she's genuinely needy.

As the bodies stack up Anna gets deeper down the rabbit and ends up thinking that William Thompson is the killer. After he's caught she tries to move on with her life and after her boyfriend moves with a new girlfriend she writes a long, vicious and angry letter to William Thompson in prison. She never expects him to write back.

William's letter is thoughtful and courteous and he gives no indication of his guilt. She writes a longer angrier letter back and immediately after masturbates, having an extraordinary orgasm.

This begins a series of letter where William clearly looking for companionship bears his soul, though he never reveals if he's killed anyone. As he never confesses Hannah feels compelled to keep writing him – because surely he'll tell her and then she can reveal the truth and she'll get the fame she deserves. She ends up doing an inadequate job when it comes to funding an event at her non-profit and she spends more time dealing with William then her first chance to succeed on her own. When Hannah is asked what her goals are later on she can't come up with an answer. She starts blaming her parents for putting to much pressure on her when there's a drought in letters from William. She's falling down a rabbit hole and there are some people who warn her about it – and she doesn't like how it 'dampens my joy.' The irony is that for all her inside information on William she's no closer to finding out the truth of anyone else in the forum – who she hasn't told she's writing them.

When Hannah loses her job rather then look for a new one, she maxes out her credit cards and takes a trip to Georgia for the trial of William Thompson.

At that time, I wasn't worried that he would kill me. I worried only that he wouldn't find me beautiful when he finally saw me in prison. Like I , Hannah, would be disappointing to him, an accused serial killer. In retrospect, it was possible the order of my fears was misguided.

The second part of the novel deals with Hannah in Georgia at the trial of William. She spends the entire trial looking at the back of his head and listening to the prosecution and the defense lay out the case. She takes notes measuring his guilt and innocence, all of which are undercut by how she thinks William is handsome. She meets Dotty and Lauren both of whom are equally obsessed with William. She knows that both these women are obsessed with him but she needs company. Dotty is older then her and has separated from her husband because of this; Lauren is in college and has already fallen in love with a former killer.

By this point Hannah has noticed some of the other cliques that have formed, most notably the friends and family of the killer's victim. They avoid her because they can tell she's one of those women. Anna can't help but complain to William about how she wishes they were friendlier. She gets involved with the Thompson family by accident, claiming she's trying to find proof that William is guilty, perhaps unaware that she may be looking to see her future in-laws. Hannah is close to giving up when a new set of letters come from William. Again he never comes close to telling her whether he's innocent or guilty.

Eventually she meets Mark and Cindy, who are among the wealthy elite in Atlanta and Willam's brother Bentley, who's married with two children. Eventually she gets close to Bentley, in part because he thinks his brother's guilty, mostly because he looks like William and he calls her pretty.

By the halfway point of the novel Coryell plays her greatest joke yet. William is opening up to her and telling her how important she is to him and how much she means to him. He's finally becoming the kind of man she claims she's always wanted. But that's not the best joke; the joke is that by this time Hannah is pouring over these notes, hoping for a hint that if he gets out, the first thing he'll do is murder her.

William wrote all the things I'd wanted men to tell me for years and it left me with the same sensation I had when I finally purchased a food item that I was craving, only to discover what I wanted at all. I wanted him to tell me about his pain, his violence, who had hurt hum and who he hurt in return.

She writes a long letter to him, which I assume she never sends because she crosses out all of the parts that have to do with her increasingly violent (and hysterical) desires. The trial comes to an end and then for reasons I won't go into, William is found not guilty. This actually bothers Hannah more than anything else because as she puts it "it was like every other relationship I've ever had."

Then William shows up at her hotel room, tells her how much she means to him, and proposes to her. Hannah is disappointed because he isn't there to kill her.

Now we enter the third and final part of the novel and I'll finally start becoming vague, not so much not to spoil the reveal but rather the jokes which are among the funniest – and darkest in their entire book.

Immediately after this Hannah and William have sex and Hannah is disappointed because "I waited for the turn when he went from man to murderer. It never came." William makes it clear he wants to give her everything and he's wealthy enough and privileged enough to do so. What he doesn't know is that Hannah wants him to kill her and he keeps putting it off. Hannah keeps on writing her notebook, trying to argue that everything he does including their sex life is evidence of his guilt. When she's alone in the house she finds a group of letters written by countless other women who have basically alternating between what Hannah feels now and what she did then. She writes a list of their names saying she's worried about them going missing or 'if he was engaged in a type of epistolary adultery'. She can't tell the difference between real evidence and actual one, which demonstrates she's not good at investigating either.

Obviously this novel ends with Hannah face to face with the killer, though whether he is William or not I will leave to you to find out. Both William and the entire family have secrets, none of which are that original. That, I imagine is the point of the reveal; this is a story about sticking to the cliches of the format from the perspective of one of 'those women'. What I will say is that Hannah ends up getting what she deserves, which as we all know is rarely the same thing as what we desire. In Hannah's case its fitting.

Coryell lives in St. Paul and while she has written stories, essays and poems, Love Letters to a Serial Killer is her debut novel. It was published two years ago and it's a hell of a way to make a literary debut. I've more than read my share of great first novels from writers and I've passed on quite a few recommendations to my readers here but Love Letters is by far the most fun I've had in a while reading. Not in the way of thriller but in a perfect mix of both black comedy, true crime and the kind of woman that (as another favorite of mine Jesse Q. Sutanto said in her blurb) "you don't know whether to shake or hug her." I spent much of the novel wanting to shake her but considering Hannah probably likes that kind of thing, maybe its one and the same.

I disagree with Sutanto about a need for a sequel to this book – if there's one thing we know, it’s becoming a franchise frequently ruins the power of the original. What I do know is that I would send love letters to Coryell any time, telling her I can't wait for her next book. I hope she writes all of us back with another gem…soon.