Underneath - by Lily Hoang (Paperback)

About the Book

Martha Johnson wants to be a good mother and a devoted wife. It's all she's ever wanted in life, and she tries her very best, but when her husband threatens to leave her, her desperation reveals only one strategy that can save her family, punish her ungrateful husband, and earn power: murder.

Book Synopsis

Over a five-year period, Martha Johnson murders her four children, one by one, in order to punish her husband when they argue, but Martha is no ordinary serial killer. She murders her children by using the bulk of her 250-pound body to suffocate them. Unlike other fictionalized true-crime novels, Underneath neither valorizes nor focuses on the specific acts of violence. Instead, it attempts to understand how feelings of powerlessness, the residue of trauma, and the need to find justice in a world that refuses to give a fat body justice finds its only respite through murder.

Review Quotes

"In a word, wow! ... Underneath is spell-binding. You almost want to read it in one sitting but you can stop anywhere and come back to it." --Patch

"Beautiful sentences telling a dreadful, tragic tale of love, in its absence and its perverse, incomprehensible to normies, twisted shapes." --Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud

"A memorably chilling, compulsively engaging, deftly crafted and thought-provoking read from an author with a genuine flair for originality and the kind narrative driven storytelling is the foundation literary excellence, Underneath is especially recommended for the personal lists of mature readers and for community library Contemporary Crime Fiction collections." --Midwest Book Review

"Underneath is a haunting novel about the making of a serial killer." --Eileen Gonzalez, Forward Review