Quick Take
- Performance: Alessio Mizzan reads the Italian edition, so the first thing a buyer notices is that the recording language does not match the English original.
- What it covers: Serial killers in love, friends and rivals, dark comedy against on-page gore
- Feel: Playful, bloody, flirtatious
- Our call: A genuinely funny dark romance, provided you have confirmed which language you are buying.
Mondadori published this recording for the Italian market, and the description attached to it never switches out of Italian. The language field says Italian as well. Three of the five written responses, meanwhile, were filed in the United States, in English, about a book those readers met in English. So settle that question before anything else about this audiobook: ten hours and forty-eight minutes, read by Alessio Mizzan, on a record whose copy closes by announcing that the book is at last arriving in Italy.
Serial Killers Compete Once a Year
Sloane and Rowan are serial killers who hunt serial killers, and that premise does most of the heavy lifting. They have known each other for years, they recognize the same pitch-black soul in each other, and once a year they meet to compete over the worst monsters the country can produce. The hunt travels: small towns in Virginia, sophisticated California, the suburbs of Boston, the fields of Texas. They are friends and rivals at the same time, and the copy is explicit that the long-dormant attraction between them eventually detonates, at which point the romance takes on horror coloring.
Dark romantic comedy is the phrase the publisher chooses, and the comedy half is load bearing. A five-star from September 2025 puts it precisely: fun while being dark at the same time, the dark humor on point, steamy and a little twisted. That combination is the entire proposition. Remove the jokes and you have a violent thriller with a romance subplot attached; leave them in and the murders work as banter, the competition works as flirting, and the horror lands only when the book decides you have been comfortable for long enough.
Publisher and Reviewer Disagree on the Trope
Trope shopping is how this genre gets bought, so be precise about what the labels here actually say. The publisher calls the book a friends-to-lovers story. A five-star filed from the United States calls it an enemies to lovers vibe with a slow burn. Both are defensible from a setup that describes the pair as friends and rivals at once, but they are not the same purchase, and anyone who filters by trope deserves to know the record disagrees with itself. What the two labels do agree on is the slow part, since the attraction sits dormant for a long time before it goes anywhere.
Once a year is an unusual clock for a romance. Most contemporary romance compresses into weeks, while this one lets its couple meet, compete, separate and reconvene, which accumulates the sort of shared history a series normally needs three volumes to build. It also answers the question every murderous romance has to answer, which is why these two do not simply move in together. The annual hunt is the reason they keep circling, and the bloody trail of ghosts the copy promises, waiting to claim vengeance, is what finally closes the distance between them.
Mizzan Balances Banter and Cruelty Alone
Language outranks every other caution on this record. The publisher is Mondadori Libri, the description is written in Italian and pitched at Italian buyers, and the language field reads Italian, so what is being sold here is in all likelihood an Italian-language recording of a novel written in English. Then look at where the reception came from: three written entries filed in the United States in English, one from Germany, one from Italy. A badge of 4.5 across 176 ratings is averaging verdicts on at least two different products in at least two languages.
Violence is the second thing the record leaves you to discover on your own. The entry filed from Italy in January 2026 describes a fairly dark plot with adventurous scenes between the two leads and a good deal that is by turns tender and spicy, and it opens by admiring the cover as a piece of design, which is not a feature any recording has. The copy sells murders, chaos and effervescent chemistry without indicating how graphic any of it becomes, and no content note appears anywhere on the page.
Alessio Mizzan is handed two killers who talk to each other for most of ten hours and forty-eight minutes, in a register that has to carry banter and cruelty inside the same sentence without tipping into camp. One reader covering a two-hander of that kind has to keep the pair separable while they are finishing each other's jokes, and has to make the tonal turn work when the comedy stops. That is the technical demand this particular text makes of a single voice, and it is a harder assignment than the genre label suggests.
Funny Dark Romance for Evenly Matched Killers
Readers who want their dark romance to be genuinely funny are the target here, and the reception supports that reading. One five-star sums the whole book up as murderous and spicy, gory and amazing in the same breath, which tells you the audience arrives for the mixture rather than tolerating one half to reach the other. It suits people who like a couple matched in competence, too: nobody in this pairing needs rescuing, and the power balance stays level from the first meeting to the last.
It is the wrong purchase for anyone who wants the English-language recording, at least on this record. It is wrong as well for listeners who need violence kept offstage, or who find murder played for laughs indefensible on principle, because the tone is not an accident, it is the design. One look at the language field settles the first question and the description settles the second, which together make this a listing where reading the fields closely is worth more than reading the reviews.
What language is this audiobook recorded in?
The language field says Italian, Mondadori Libri is named as publisher, and every line of the copy is Italian, aimed squarely at an Italian launch. One entry even arrives from Germany with an Italian headline over a German body. English-only listeners should look for a separate recording rather than assume this file matches the original text.
How graphic does the audiobook get?
Murder, chaos and a romance that turns horror-shaded once the attraction ignites are all promised, and none of it is graded. Expect explicit violence alongside explicit intimacy, delivered in a comic register that treats neither as solemn. Anybody who relies on content warnings will have to find them off the page.
How is the story structured across the runtime?
Around an annual reunion. The pair meet once a year to hunt the worst offenders they can find, which carries the story through small-town Virginia, California, the suburbs of Boston and the fields of Texas, and gives the romance a long calendar to develop across instead of one continuous stretch of days.
