Quick Take
- Narration: Andi Arndt brings Sidney’s deadpan pragmatism to life with consistent comic timing and a controlled emotional range that suits the tonal balancing act of the material
- Themes: life in the aftermath of infamy, trust and romantic risk, the collision of true crime culture with ordinary people
- Mood: Darkly funny and tense in turns, lighter than the title suggests
- Verdict: A genre blend that works better as a character study of a woman rebuilding her life than as a conventional thriller or romance, adjust expectations accordingly and it delivers.
I was halfway through a long drive when I queued this one up, mostly because the title read like a dare. Kylie Scott is a name I know from her Stage Dive series, so I understood that dark subject matter would be handled with her characteristic dry humor rather than genuine menace. What I did not anticipate was how effectively the book uses Sidney’s situation, ten years post-arrest, still carrying the social fallout of having unknowingly dated a serial killer, as a lens for examining how quickly a life can calcify around a defining catastrophe.
The premise sounds like a thriller punchline, but Scott takes Sidney’s isolation seriously. She has few friends left, avoids public spaces because she gets noticed in ways that are not flattering, and has spent the better part of a decade quietly working with others to identify additional victims of her ex. Then Noah, a tattooed chef Scott introduces as a textbook thirst trap, moves in next door and complicates things in the expected ways. The structure is familiar. What makes this Audible Original worth finishing is the specific texture of Sidney’s voice and the surprisingly sharp social observation running beneath the genre surface.
Sidney Walsh and the Weight of Proximity to Evil
The most interesting thing about So My Ex-Boyfriend Is a Serial Killer is not the serial killer. It is the social mechanics of what happens to a person who was simply in the wrong relationship. Sidney did not know what her ex was doing while they dated. Nobody can prove she did. And yet the stigma has reorganized her entire existence, she moved, changed her habits, lost her friend group, and built a small, defensible life that the true crime community and online amateur investigators keep trying to breach.
One reviewer described the first half as more focused on the true crime angle than the romance, and that observation is accurate: the book is as much about the parasocial appetite for crime stories and the people consumed by them as it is about Sidney and Noah finding each other. Scott’s dry humor surfaces regularly in the way Sidney narrates her situation, there is a specific kind of gallows comedy in being the woman whose ex got dragged off to jail while she was still processing the breakup. Andi Arndt’s narration captures that register exactly. She reads Sidney as someone who has made a kind of reluctant peace with absurdity, which is the only way a character in this situation remains sympathetic rather than pitiable.
Noah and the Problem of the Romance Subplot
Several reviews note, accurately, that Noah gets less page time than the setup promises. He is warm and compelling in the scenes he occupies, but the romance arc is compressed relative to the thriller plot. The book’s climax, when the ex decides Sidney has unfinished business, escalates quickly and resolves without the slow-burn satisfaction that Scott built toward in the novel’s middle section. One reviewer said they wanted more Noah, and that response is understandable: the emotional payoff of the relationship arrives before it feels fully earned at the sprint the narrative takes late.
This is partly a structural consequence of running at just over six hours. The Audible Original format constraints are visible in the third act. The happily-ever-after is present and the emotional beats are all technically resolved, but the pacing compresses in ways that a longer runtime would have avoided. If you come to Kylie Scott specifically for her romantic tension and slow builds, this delivers that in the first two-thirds and then accelerates past it.
Where the True Crime Satire Lands
Scott is clearly interested in skewering the true crime industrial complex, the fans who romanticize killers, the amateur investigators who believe their podcast research entitles them to access the people adjacent to the crime, the cop who cannot quite let go of his suspicion of Sidney despite zero evidence. These elements land sharply. The book is at its best when it is examining the way notoriety functions as a kind of contamination, spreading outward from the original event to everyone connected to it regardless of their actual culpability.
The first-person present-tense narration that one reviewer flagged as a hesitation point actually serves the tone well in audio form. Arndt keeps it immediate without making it feel breathless, and the Audible Original production is clean throughout the runtime.
Reading This as a Kylie Scott Novel
Long-time Scott readers will find familiar pleasures here, the dry wit, the protagonists who are smarter about other people’s emotions than their own, the moment where the emotional dam breaks and the feeling you have been waiting for finally arrives. The departure is the thriller scaffolding, which is more present than in her contemporary romance work and which some readers will find invigorating and others will find slightly in the way of what they actually came for.
Listen if you enjoy Kylie Scott’s voice and appreciate romantic suspense that prioritizes character interiority over action set pieces. Skip if you want a thriller with genuine menace, or if you are primarily here for the romance and want a long, slow emotional build. Skip if first-person present tense irritates you in ways no narrator can fix.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need to have read other Kylie Scott books before starting this one?
No. This is a standalone and the setup is entirely self-contained. Familiarity with Scott’s tone and humor will calibrate your expectations better, but the book does not assume prior knowledge of any series or characters.
Is this primarily a romance or primarily a thriller?
It is a romance-adjacent thriller that leans heavier on the thriller and character-study elements than on romantic tension. Several reviewers found the romance subplot thinner than expected. If your priority is the love story, go in aware that it competes with the true crime plot for page time.
How graphic is the violence involving the serial killer ex?
The book does not dwell on the details of the crimes. The violence is present in the backstory and in the climax, but Scott handles it at a level appropriate for genre romantic suspense rather than grimdark thriller. The tone remains controlled throughout.
Is Andi Arndt’s narration a good fit for Sidney as a first-person female protagonist?
Yes. Arndt reads Sidney’s voice, dry, wary, occasionally sardonic, with precision. The comedic timing is particularly well-handled, which matters because the book’s darkest elements are balanced against humor. This is one of Arndt’s more effective performances in the genre.
