Nice addition to novella 1. Again, the story is short, and I wouldn't have minded if it was longer... ( )

The first book in the series, The Murders of Molly Southbourne, was a bloody, violent surprise of a story, a horror tale steeped in mystery where the reader is in the dark about what’s going on for quite a while. To catch unfamiliar readers up to speed, our protagonist Molly is a young girl who has a unique but terrible condition: every time she bleeds, she creates a new “molly” who immediately tries to kill her. Molly has been trained by her mother and father from a young age to kill these clones, or “duplicates” as she calls them, as soon as they appear, so Molly’s life has been filled with murder and plenty of strict rules to follow. Don’t bleed. Kill the mollys. Burn the evidence.

The sequel opens right after the events at the end of the last book. Molly has just escaped a burning house and has called a phone number tattooed on her arm. The phone number is a help line, where a team will come out and obliterate all traces of the fire and the blood. But something is wrong. Molly isn’t actually Molly, but a molly, a duplicate. The real Molly, or Molly Prime, died in the fire. Now molly must navigate a dangerous and unfamiliar world, armed only with Molly’s memories and the story she told her right before the fire.

One day molly runs into another of her kind, a woman named Tamara who also creates duplicates when she bleeds, and harbors secrets that will unlock Molly's past and completely change the rules she lives by.

Thompson's prose, as always, is tight, effective, and atmospheric. I didn't love it the way I loved Murders. The plot is sadly a bit of a tangled mess but the story is still quick and compelling enough to warrant a read, especially if you were a fan of the first novella.

This book and series does pose interesting questions about mental health and what it means to be human in today's society. No one is bothered by violence; Molly desires human connection but fails to connect with others due to viewing herself as subhuman-a duplicate. Our society is one of isolation and violence and Thompson does a good job reflecting on the current state of affairs and making it all horrifically familiar.

The ending circles back to the beginning of the first book, and even hints at a somewhat "happy" ending for Molly. I’m not sure whether Thompson has another book planned for this series, and the series feels finished but if he wants to continue the story, I'm game. ( )

Ki volt Molly Southbourne? És mit hagyott hátra?

Egy kiégett pince. Egy vérrel írt név. Gyilkosságra emlékező testek, melyek közül egy életben maradt. És egy sor szabály, melyek többé nem érvényesek.

Molly Southbourne életben van. Ha életben is akar maradni, akkor menekülnie és bujkálnia kell, folyton harcra készen. Vannak ugyanis emberek, akik emlékeznek rá: tudják, hogy micsoda valójában, és hogy miket tett. Néhányan élve szeretnék, mások holtan akarják látni. És mindegyiküknél ott rejtőzik egy-egy darabkája a lány fejében összeálló kirakósnak.

Vajon Molly elmenekülhet előlük, vagy szembe kell néznie teremtésének véres múltjával? (Moly.hu)

On discovering that there was a sequel to _The Murders of Molly Southbourne_ I had instant and conflicting responses of 'how' and 'gimme'. This story has answered the former in exquisite (but rarely complete) detail, and rewarded me for the latter. Thompson has done an incredible job of taking complex and self-contained story, and expanded it out to provide context.

I found it fascinating that what I had read as present day doom and gloom was in fact Thatcherite Britain doom and gloom, and to some extent the way that the bits of news bounced off my personal memories of the news items (as a youngling in another country) coloured my reading of those sections,

I'd like to say I read this in one sitting. The truth is that it is so very intense, so visceral in places, that I needed regular breaks to take a deep breath and reflect on what was written -- and even then I finished it in an afternoon. This is an amazingly powerful story of self, self-acceptance, and living with constant threat, and what it does to you. ( )

A bit too confusing. ( )