Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5

“No more corpses. At least, that was the plan.”

I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I read Murder Mindfully, but Karsten Dusse is back with book two in this series! If comical crime is your idea of a perfect read, get this series on your TBR, honestly. It’s such an entertaining series and combined with the crime element, it just works so well. Super happy to be sharing my review for My Inner Child Wants To Murder Mindfully!

About the book

Lawyer turned murderer Björn wants to stop killing. Unfortunately, the prisoner in his basement is getting restless, the parents’ committee at his daughter’s preschool is clamouring for his attention, and to cap it all, he’s also being blackmailed.

To manage all this stress, he turns to a mindfulness coach to learn about the unmet needs of his inner child. As he begins listening to this inner child, he finds it doesn’t just have needs, but solutions: creative ways he can solve his problems. All of them.

The trouble is, they involve murder.

The beginning

I was very thankful the first chapter was written how it was because when you read as much as we do, it can be hard to remember exactly what goes down in the first book of a series when a new one is released! We get a really clever wrap up of what happened in book one, all while perfectly getting us up to speed with Björn’s life since we left that explosive finale. He’s now co-parenting his daughter. He’s back in therapy. He still has a prisoner holed up in his basement. However, the murders have stopped at least… for now. But, as I expected, this life of mindfulness was bound to crack under pressure, and Björn unintentionally kills a waiter in the Alps. It was only meant to show him a lesson, a little childish prank. But then something else happens to mess things up further; his prisoner has escaped. They are all in danger. With familiar characters from book one popping up, it became so easy to sink back into the chaos of Björn’s life and to look forward to the impending danger. He needed his therapist. He needed to fix his life, once again. And I couldn’t wait for the ride this time!

“I wanted to learn more. I wanted to find out what my inner child was like. Why I was only meeting it now. But above all: how I could get a handle on it before another careless act drew more attention and put me in serious danger.”

As with the last book, I loved how we spend a lot of time in Björn’s therapy sessions with his therapist, Joschka Breitner. Not only does Björn receive such great advice and strategies to work on his mindfulness, he also learns more about his inner child, how his childhood memories and experiences are affecting his life in the present. The pacing was pretty slow as we balance this mindful thinking and therapy sessions with the potential dangers and bad people creeping back to the surface, but I was still enjoying the ride, even though the flow of the book felt a little off. But this author’s unique humour really sucked me in once again – why is the dangerous mobster who escaped the basement now tied up in a pre-school pink princess playhouse? Despite how funny this was to visualise, it was actually pretty serious. Someone was watching them. And I had a feeling it was someone they knew quite well. After this mysterious person sends their request (the removal of said mobster’s head, and proof of it) Björn has yet another problem to solve…

The middle

By the book’s midpoint, it didn’t really feel as though the story had moved on that much. I seemed to be constantly waiting for the next big thing to happen, to feel an excitement about what could happen, and I just didn’t get that from it. But at the same time, I was kind of enjoying the pacing and never felt like I wanted to give up on the book. Explain that one 😂 But when the blackmail started, my curiosity was piqued a little. Who was behind it all? I had a feeling it would be someone in his close circle, yet when Björn meets Laura, another parent of a pre-school child, I had my suspicions, even though Björn took a liking to this woman. I could sense everything going wrong here. There was certainly a part of her I didn’t like… I was enjoying how Björn communicated with his inner child and it gave the book a unique edge. The blackmailer strikes back with another (pretty grim) request, and Björn must work quickly to solve this time-sensitive problem, with his inner child as his sounding board and partner in crime, of course. This could go either way…

“Sorry, but if I’m not mistaken, you’re a fourty-three-year-old lawyer.”

“And inside every adult is the child they once were.”

Alongside Björn, I started going through a list of potential suspects to try and find the identity of the blackmailer. As Björn assesses these characters one by one, it helped me to remember exactly who was in their circle, who was dangerous and shouldn’t be trusted, who could have a hidden agenda, who could be keeping secrets. And, surprisingly, the list was pretty extensive. I love suspecting the quieter ones in a book, or those you wouldn’t necessarily suspect, yet I had a feeling this person could be someone closer to home. What if it was his wife? There was also Laura’s weird brother, Kurt, who is in need of legal advice, but even though his involvement would soon be significant (and oh boy, this was another issue altogether, another pain in the arse) I wasn’t convinced he was the blackmailer. He seemed to lack common sense… There were some really strong, memorable new characters in this book, but I still felt like the returning characters were the best ones. I particularly loved all of Sasha’s input in everything going on, an important character from book one.

The end

The intense weight on Björn’s shoulders at this point was even causing me to panic a bit; it seemed his past was coming back to haunt him and I wasn’t sure how he’d get out of this mess. There was a whole new kind of tension laced throughout the pages here and it felt as though Björn’s walls were caving in. This was easily the best part of the book as Björn forms a cohesive plan which would eliminate more than one of his many problems. He’s even pretty sure of the blackmailer’s identity (well I’ll be damned!) I loved how calm and collected he was as he puts his plan in motion, and obviously his therapy and mindfulness practices were the reason for this. The absolute best bit of humour in the entire book came here; as Björn and his new love interest get ever closer – at the same time Sasha carries out the most important part of their plan – the way it was written set the giggles off. Intertwining bedroom antics with the throwing of molotovs was something so brilliant that I needed to read it twice 😆 Oh my days. Björn needed his plan to go well. And if it didn’t? He might not live past Friday…

“I don’t think we’ll be able to manage this without some mindful murder.”

I really enjoyed the ending chapters of the book and found them to be very clever and intelligently written (is that a thing?) The final chapter in particular is very satisfying. It was so well thought out and actually reminded me of the SAW films a bit (before the gore starts…) I loved how everything isn’t neatly tied up, hinting that we’ll be getting another book, and I was left wondering how things played out for Boris and Kurt. Sometimes, this kind of ending can infuriate me, but not this time. By the end, I found that my love for these characters, especially Björn and Sasha, was magnified, and it was good to know that a new healthy romance was finally on the cards for Björn. As it had been throughout the book, the humour was spot on and there was another scene with the pre-school parents that had me giggling again! I definitely felt like this book was much longer than it needed to be, but I’m so glad I stuck with it. I can see so much potential for a new book! And I still haven’t sat down and watched the Murder Mindfully Netflix series… Need to fix that, ASAP!

Overall thoughts

My Inner Child Wants To Murder Mindfully is a great follow up to book one, full of mystery, shady characters and plenty of mindfulness to balance out the danger. And of course, it’s darkly comical, something this author effortlessly perfects. Even now, a year after I read the first book, I still haven’t read a series quite like this one, and it still feels so very unique. Björn is back, and after swearing there would be no more murder, he unintentionally kills a waiter in the Alps. After starting up therapy again, balancing father duties and attempting to nurture a failing marriage, he meets his inner child, who helps him rationalise his every move, problem-solves with him, encourages him, and basically takes the chaos to a whole new level. It’s a slower-paced read, much deeper than the first book which I liked. I don’t think I enjoyed it quite as much as the first book though, but it’s entertaining, it’s dangerous and there are plenty of surprising twists along the way. Björn is a character you cannot help but love, and I’m hoping there will be a third book coming our way soon!

Huge thanks to the team at Faber for my copy! You can grab your own copy of My Inner Child Wants To Murder Mindfully on Amazon or wherever you buy your books.

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