By Dan Wells

Published 2010

AR Level 6.0

AR Points 11.0

Word Count 70,006

No really, I’m not.

I had to post something truly scary on Halloween, and this book scared the heck out of me. Now, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a fan of scary. But I’d heard some buzz about this mystery, and I decided to give it a go.

Inside the mind of the disturbed…

I wasn’t sure I could identify with the main character. But pretty soon, this book became one that I could not put down, and I found myself rooting for the most unlikely of heroes. I think it’s highly certain that you will not guess where this one is going. Word of caution though…this is definitely a teen book. By that I mean, not for advanced elementary readers.

Description from B&N:

John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it.

He’s spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.

He’s obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he’s written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.

Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don’t demand or expect the empathy he’s unable to offer. Perhaps that’s what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there’s something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat—-and to appreciate what that difference means.

Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can’t control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.

Dan Wells’s debut novel, I Am Not a Serial Killer, is the first volume of a trilogy that will keep you awake and then haunt your dreams.