Shailee Thompson’s debut novel, How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates (2026), is a slasher romantic comedy with a metafictional premise. The story follows Jamie Prescott, a PhD candidate whose dissertation argues that slasher films and romantic comedies share the same narrative formulas. When Jamie and her best friend attend a speed-dating event, her academic theories are put to the test as a masked killer begins murdering the attendees. Jamie soon realizes the killer is staging the massacre as a twisted romantic gesture for her, forcing her to navigate the bloody reality of her own analysis while she is caught between two potential love interests. The novel explores themes such as Using Romantic Tropes to Justify Violence, Applying the Rules of Fiction to a Real-Life Crisis and Synthesizing the Final Girl and the Leading Lady Archetypes.

An Australian writer and educator, Thompson uses the novel to blend horror and romance, playing with the conventions of both genres. The narrative directly engages with contemporary cultural trends such as dating app fatigue, which has led to a resurgence of in-person singles events like the one that serves as the novel’s central setting. By trapping its characters in a labyrinthine nightclub, the plot uses the classic horror setup of the monster in the house to examine modern anxieties about intimacy and personal safety.

This guide refers to the 2026 Gallery Books edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, sexual content, cursing, and death.

Plot Summary

Jamie Prescott, a PhD candidate writing a dissertation on the structural parallels between slasher films and romantic comedies, lives in Brooklyn with her best friend and roommate, Laurie Hamilton, a documentary filmmaker. As part of a pact to attend one in-person singles event per month, they head to a speed-dating night at a club called Serendipity. Before they leave, a news broadcast reports the fifth victim of a serial killer dubbed the “Brooklyn Serial Killer,” whose calling card is rose petals left around the bodies of young, blond, petite women.

Serendipity turns out to be a renovated version of Cravin’, a club Jamie and Laurie frequented years earlier. The building spans three levels connected by mazelike hallways and hidden rooms: a basement bar, a ground-level dance floor, and a mezzanine. A no-device policy means their phones and bags are locked away at coat check. During a women-only cocktail hour, Jamie bonds with several women, including Colette, Dani, and Jennifer, while receiving an unexplained cold look from a woman named Billie. The host explains the format: 10 men, 10 women, 10-minute dates, with match cards collected at the end.

Many of Jamie’s early dates are unremarkable, but two stand out. Her fourth, John, is endearing and soft-spoken, and they share an easy rapport. Her fifth, Wes, immediately captivates her with his intensity and earnest questions. Their chemistry is electric, but Jamie derails the momentum by nervously riffing about serial killers and the dangers of dating. Wes’s expression turns grave, and he leaves abruptly when the bell rings.

During a break, Jamie’s ninth date, Curtis, makes a crude remark. As she confronts him, the lights cut out. In the darkness, Curtis’s throat is slit. When the lights return, Curtis, both bartenders, and the host are dead. Jamie grabs a broken bottle as a weapon, drawing on the rules from the “How to Survive a Slasher” poster she keeps in her apartment (45). Eight other survivors emerge and arm themselves: Laurie, Wes, John, Stu, Colette, Dani, and Campbell.

Jamie guides the group upstairs using her memory of the club’s old layout, but the front doors are locked with a coded keypad, the coat check attendant has been killed, and the phone lockbox is missing. Despite Jamie’s protests against splitting up (a violation of rule number five), the group divides into two teams to search for exits. Jamie’s team follows a trail of rose petals past two fresh bodies with puncture wounds identical to the Brooklyn Serial Killer’s signature, confirming the same killer may be inside the club.

When the teams reconvene, several members have scattered. Jamie presents her slasher survival rules and the group splits again to search the mezzanine. There, Jamie witnesses the killer for the first time: a figure in a pink ski mask with heart-shaped eyeholes, whom she mentally dubs Heart Eyes, stabs a man at the end of a hallway. She flees with Laurie and Jennifer and hides behind a bar in a VIP room. Heart Eyes enters and leaves a crimson rose with a card reading, “Can’t you see? You belong to me” (141). Jamie theorizes that the killer is targeting someone they met at the speed dates, committing the murders as a twisted romantic gesture.

The horror deepens when the group discovers that Heart Eyes has spelled Jamie’s name on the dance floor using Colette’s intestines, arranged inside a heart shape. Jamie is devastated to learn she is the target, but the others note that people die when they are away from her, not near her. Wes and Jamie develop a theory: The killer is treating the night as both a slasher and a rom-com, casting Jamie as the Final Girl, the sole survivor who defeats the villain, and the Leading Lady, the heroine the killer believes will return his love. They review the match cards, examining each male date as a potential suspect.

Jamie spots a ventilation shaft in the women’s bathroom and forces a protesting Laurie to crawl through it to escape and bring help. Heart Eyes enters moments later. Jamie locks herself in a stall and survives the encounter; the killer scratches a heart with a “J” and “4EVA” into the mirror before leaving. Later, Heart Eyes corners the group in a hallway. John, weakened from a shoulder wound, charges the killer so Jamie and Wes can escape.

When Stu catches up with them, Wes proposes triggering the building’s fire alarm to summon emergency services. Pressed to explain how he knows the system is monitored, Wes reveals he is a homicide detective suspended from the Brooklyn Serial Killer case for punching a colleague who made inappropriate comments about the victims. Since he attended the event on his own initiative, no backup is coming. The group’s trust fractures, and Stu insists on splitting up again, sending Jamie and Wes to a janitor’s closet to find flammable materials while he leads the others to locate the alarm’s control panel.

Alone in the closet, Jamie confronts Wes about his deception. He insists he never faked his feelings for her and delivers an impassioned confession. They kiss, and the encounter escalates. Afterward, they find a lighter and supplies to trigger the smoke detectors.

Events accelerate as more survivors die. Heart Eyes kills Stu with an ax in front of Jamie and Wes, and they discover John dead in a bathroom. When they rejoin the others, Billie reveals herself as one of the killers, slitting Jennifer’s throat with a switchblade and producing the Heart Eyes mask. She taunts Jamie, calling her “a disappointment, just like the others” (279). When Billie slashes Wes in the chest and charges with a knife, Jamie strikes her with a broken broomstick rod, sending Billie over the mezzanine railing to her death.

Since Billie was in the basement when Heart Eyes attacked on the mezzanine, and her body type is different than the person who killed Stu, Jamie determines that there are two killers in the building. When she encounters John emerging from the stairs, very much alive, she realizes he has faked his wounds with corn syrup. John cups Jamie’s face and kisses her without consent, confirming her instincts. John confesses he orchestrated the entire night after seeing Jamie during cocktail hour. Billie, whom he met at a singles cooking class, was his accomplice. He killed each of his previous victims because they failed to reciprocate his feelings.

Jamie escapes, reunites with the others, and formulates a final plan. Wes has found six surviving daters barricaded in a room with a sabotaged fire alarm panel. Jamie decides to lure John to the dance floor while Wes leads the survivors to the roof, where a fire escape she remembers from her Cravin’ days provides an exit. She retrieves a bouquet of roses from a victim’s body, concealing a knife among the stems. On the dance floor, John plays Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” turns on the disco ball, and delivers a love confession, asking Jamie to say yes. Instead, Jamie provokes him by revealing that she kissed Wes. As John steps close enough to reach her, Jamie drives the concealed blade up under his ribs. The sprinkler system activates overhead, signaling that Wes and the others have triggered the smoke detectors. Following the slasher rule that “down doesn’t mean dead” (xi), Jamie ensures John will not get up again.

Police flood the building. Outside, Jamie finds Laurie behind a barricade, having escaped through the vents and called for help. Laurie sprints toward her and pulls her into a tight embrace, a shocking departure from her usual aversion to physical affection, and tells Jamie she is her favorite. Wes arrives soaking wet from the sprinklers and tells Jamie he thinks he is going to fall in love with her. In an epilogue eight months later, Jamie has moved in with Laurie and Wes. She’s started teaching film studies and attending therapy. Laurie is developing a documentary about the events at Serendipity. Jamie reflects that Final Girls and Leading Ladies are not born but made through their choices—she chose to be both.