Codename Villanelle and No Tomorrow by Luke Jennings

Codename Villanelle 

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 224 

Publisher: John Murray 

Released: 26th of June 2017 

She is the perfect assassin.

A Russian orphan, saved from the death penalty for the brutal revenge she took on her gangster father's killers.

Ruthlessly trained. Given a new life. New names, new faces - whichever fits.

Her paymasters call themselves The Twelve. But she knows nothing of them. Konstantin is the man who saved her, and the one she answers to.

She is Villanelle. Without conscience. Without guilt. Without weakness.

Eve Polastri is the woman who hunts her. MI5, until one error of judgment costs her everything.

Until stopping a ruthless assassin becomes more than her job. It becomes personal.

Originally published as ebook singles: Codename Villanelle , Hollowpoint , Shanghai and Odessa. 

No Tomorrow 

Pages: 256 

Publisher: John Murray 

Released:  28th of November 2018

In a hotel room in Venice, where she's just completed a routine assassination, Villanelle receives a late-night call.

Eve Polastri has discovered that a senior MI5 officer is in the pay of the Twelve, and is about to debrief him. As Eve interrogates her subject, desperately trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, Villanelle moves in for the kill.

The duel between the two women intensifies, as does their mutual obsession, and when the action moves from the high passes of the Tyrol to the heart of Russia, Eve finally begins to unwrap the enigma of her adversary's true identity.

What I Have to Say 

I really enjoyed Killing Eve, the series on the BBC, so when I saw the books, I thought I'd give them to read. It wasn't as good as the series, the writing was a little clunky and the plot was quite long and drawn out (which is more understandable now that I know it was a series of eBooks), I think that the way that they changed it for TV was better. It did however make much more sense in the books when they went to Shanghai. I'm not sure why they changed it to Germany in the series. 

I did like having more details about the characters. Villanelle got a lot more background and detail in Codename Villanelle and it was so cool to see more about her life and the way she became an assassin. In the second book it was Nico who I loved to see more from. In series he was kind of in the background being there and getting annoyed at Eve's growing obsession with Villanelle. But in the book he was funny and quirky. He was so sweet and he had goats. It was worth reading for the antics of the goats. 

The other thing that I liked better in the book was the ending. It was so different from the series and it was far more satisfying. 

I think it was worth reading, but I was off-put by a lot of the sex and the gritty stuff that wasn't really needed. Villanelle was unecessarily crass in some scenes and it just wasn't my thing. I also felt that telling everything about Villanelle's identity in the first few paragraphs took away all the mystery and suspense. The series kept a lot of surprises so it kept you watching and guessing. The book was very lacking in this respect. 

If you loved the series though and want to see more behind the characters and the parts of their personality that had to be dropped for the series, then it's worth reading, but perhaps not if you're not into grimy, gritty crime. 

My thanks go to John Murray and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review.