REVIEW: The Murder Complex (The Murder Complex #1) by Lindsay Cummings

An action-packed, blood-soaked, futuristic debut thriller set in a world where the murder rate is higher than the birthrate. For fans of Moira Young’s Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.

Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.

The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?

Action-packed, blood-soaked, and chilling, this is a dark and compelling debut novel by Lindsay Cummings.

My Thoughts:

Welcome to the Murder Complex.

You cannot see us. You cannot feel us.

But we are here.

And we control your every move

I'm one of those people that tend to put off reading books that everyone else is excited about. I do eventually get around to reading them, but I tend to wait until all the excitement has died down. Don't ask me why. I'm just odd like that. The Murder Complex had so much buzz over on Instagram, that I eventually checked out the synopsis and found myself really intrigued. So I went ahead and broke my rule and requested it for review. So, so happy that I did!!

See that opening of the synopsis that says, action packed and blood soaked? The Murder Complex lived up to that and then some. Lindsay Cummings did not in any way shy away from the death and gore, She was descriptive without being overly vivid. It contained the perfect balance for me. 

Sometimes we have to give up little pieces of our humanity so that we can keep living.

Meadow Woodson is tough, strong, resilient and independent. She also has a deep love of family and will do whatever it takes to protect and care for them. She carries a lot of responsibilities for someone her age, but she never shied away from them. She got in and did what had to be done. She was very self sacrificing and always seemed to put everyone else's needs before her own. I think that she's so used to the toughness of her life that she had trouble showing a great deal of vulnerability, and I would have liked to see some more of that from her.

I'm hopeless. There's nothing good about me, not really. No Matter how hard I try to make myself better, I can never take back the things I've done.

Zephyr James was such a complex character. He had so many layers to him. I found his character to be really open and exposed. He was strong. He was caring. He was emotion. So many emotions. He experienced them all throughout this book. Good, bad, crazy. He lived them all. As the reader, we always have a sense of his strength, but I think it wasn't really until the end of the book that we really got to see exactly how strong he is.

While there is romance in the book, it never really at any point overtakes the story. In fact it takes many, many twists and turns, so that at each stage, you are never really sure what exactly is going to happen or which direction things are going to progress in. It was unpredictable every step of the way. There were some sweet moments between Meadow and Zephyr, but their relationship had so much intensity and so many aspects to it.

There was so much mystery and intrigue throughout the story and I found myself really on the edge of my seat at times wondering which way Lindsay was going to take things. And nine times out of ten, she managed to surprise me. 

"Kill.

Destroy.

No escaping.

No turning back.

This is your duty. 

Purge the earth.

This is the Murder Complex."

Action and adventure are the focal points of The Murder Complex. The pacing was fantastic and the chapters, which are told in alternating points of view, were quite short which really added to the excitement levels of the story.

For a debut novel, I was really impressed with this one. Yes, in contains certain aspects that you'll find in other dystopian novels, but the original content far outweighed those.

The ending!!! The ending!!! The ending!!! Yes, what a way to end the book. I quickly tried to progress to the next chapter, because there was no way that you could leave me hanging like that. But hanging is exactly how I was left. Next book... now please!!!

Count to three. Relax your mind. Now survive.

4.5/5 Great Debut Stars.

Received from the publisher via Edelweiss for review.