We have a lot of eARC’s and we want to promote them a little bit more. So we decided to do some more Bookish Beginnings On Friday. Today I wanted to share the start of Mrs Shim is a Killer. The title immediately grabbed me and I’m really curious about it. So let’s dive in!

When a middle-aged widowed loses her job at the butcher shop, she’s at a loss as to how to provide for her family—until she’s offered a position that puts her carving skills to new uses in this darkly humorous bestselling Korean thriller.

Mrs. Shim needs money. She’s lost her husband and her job, and she’s got three mouths to feed at her kitchen table. If she doesn’t find work soon, she and her children are going to lose their home.

So when she answers a vague job ad for the Smile Detective Agency, Mrs. Shim expects the job will be some kind of cleaning position. But when they only ask her questions about her experience as a butcher and what she can do with a cleaver, she begins to realize they want her to do a very different kind of cleaning—they want her to be an assassin. Too scared not to take them up on their offer, she agrees to the position.

And Mrs. Shim soon finds that her new job isn’t so different from her old one in the butcher shop, quickly becoming the agency’s best contract killer—but her rise to the top hasn’t gone unnoticed. Jealous of her talents, her agency’s competitors—and even her own colleagues– begin pointing fingers (and knives) in her direction.

If she wants to keep her job, her family, and her reputation intact, Mrs. Shim is going to have to take out the secretive leader of a rival agency. But when she has the chance to strike, she’s stunned to find a familiar face at the end of her blade.

As it turns out, this just may be one mess she can’t cut her way out of . . .

I am sharpening a knife. When I slide it into my electric sharpener and press the button, water flows from a tray, soaking the dull blade. The machine runs. Sparks fly off like flakes of dandruff. The honed edge, a sharp steel blue, seems to thrash under the fluorescent lights like a silver cutlassfish. Flesh is tougher than a knife. Even a chef ’s knife used to slice into the tenderest of tenderloins will dull after a few days, causing a stinging pain in the wielder’s wrist. The edged metal  speaks to me. I want to rest, it says. But we still have a long way to go.

This synopsis sounds wonderful to me, I hope it’s a bit funny as well. After all, the whole idea is pretty ridiculous, so I hope it leans into that! The start of the book is interesting enough and I do want to keep on reading. I’m not sure about the writing style just yet, I’ll have to read more before deciding on that. Unfortunately my eARC is edited pretty annoyingly, there’s numbers in the middle of every other sentence, so I hope I will be able to read it without getting overstimulated.

I have pretty high hopes for this one, it sounds and looks like a book I could really enjoy! Had you heard of this book yet? What did you think of the start? Do you want to read this one? Let me know down below!