You Killed Me First

You Killed Me First (2025) is a psychological thriller that follows the story of three women: Margot, Anna, and Liv. The novel focuses on the intertwined lives of three neighbors—Liv, Anna, and Margot, opening with a description of one of the women trapped inside the bonfire, at the mercy of an unnamed tormentor. The story then details the months preceding and following this moment, unraveling the web of secrets, lies, and deceit that links the women’s fates.

John Marrs is a best-selling English author who previously worked as a freelance journalist for publications as varied as The Guardian’s Guide, OK! Magazine, Total Film, Empire, Q, GT, The Independent, and the Daily Express. His debut novel, The Wronged Sons (2013), was edited and rereleased under the title When You Disappeared in 2017, and during that same year, he also penned The One, which was later adapted into a hit Netflix series. Additionally, upon releasing the novel What Lies Between Us (2020), he was recognized with the International Thriller Writers award for Best Paperback Original Novel. With You Killed Me First, Marrs explores themes such as The Tension between Appearances and Reality, The Fragility of Relationships, and The Slippery Slope of Violence.

This guide is based on the 2025 Kindle edition by Thomas and Mercer.

Content Warning: Both the source material and this guide feature depictions of physical and emotional abuse, mental illness, suicidal ideation and self-harm, suicide, substance abuse, anti-LGBTQ+ bias, and profanity. The premise of the source text also perpetuates unfair stereotypes by depicting people with mental health conditions as dangerous. 

Language Note: This guide quotes and obscures profanity that appears in the source text.

Plot Summary

The book unfolds across two parts and is structured with chapters that primarily alternate between the perspectives of Margot, Anna, and Liv. The story spans a time period that begins 11 months prior to the central event of “Bonfire Night” and ends eight months after this critical event. In the prologue, an unnamed woman wakes up to find herself trapped beneath a blazing bonfire. Her unnamed assailant, whom she recognizes, asserts that the woman killed them first.

Eleven months before Bonfire Night, Liv and her family move into a house in the same neighborhood as Margot and Anna. Margot is a former pop-star whose career and fame ended when she married her husband, Nicu, after their affair on the set of a reality dance show. A retrospective chapter explains that after the two got married, Nicu’s ex-girlfriend, Ioana, seemingly died by suicide, leaving Margot and Nicu to parent Ioana and Nicu’s two young children. Margot has been labelled a “home wrecker” ever since, and she regularly receives hate mail from an unknown sender.

Upon moving into the neighborhood, Liv immediately takes a dislike to the arrogant and selfish Margot, who constantly criticizes and belittles the meeker Anna. Over the next few months, Liv sympathizes with Anna and finds ways to embarrass Margot, who is jealous of Liv’s wealth. 

Liv and her husband, Brandon, open up a wellness studio in the neighborhood. Unbeknownst to the others, they made their fortune by creating explicit sexual content on the internet, and Liv has financed her new home and studio by blackmailing a wealthy banker back in London. Using her wealth and connections, Liv finds ways to help Anna and bolster her own jewelry-making business while repeatedly undermining Margot.

However, Liv is unable to get Anna to turn on Margot completely, as Anna secretly has a vested interest in getting closer to Margot. Anna also harbors a secret of her own: the fact that her parents were murdered by gang members who broke into her parents’ store when Anna and her brother were younger. Over the years, Anna has been hunting down and killing the gang members responsible for her parents’ death. Anna’s own murderous history commenced when she began to hear the voice of her late mother inside her head, spurring her on to take revenge. Each time that Anna has killed one of the gang members who were suspected of killing her parents, the voice inside her head is replaced with that of her newest victim. Currently, Ioana’s voice is the one that Anna hears in her mind, and Margot is the next name on Anna’s list. 

When a detective discovers that all the other gang members are dead and that Anna is now Margot’s neighbor, he comes to investigate, but Anna’s husband, Drew, kills the detective to prevent him from digging any deeper into their affairs.

Flashbacks from 25 years ago reveal that a then-14-year-old Margot was a part of the gang of four who attempted to break in and rob a grocery store owned by Anna’s parents. They were following a tip-off from a boy named Andy, who owed the gang leader money. When the gang members were discovered by the store owner, Warren, the oldest, shot and killed both the owner and his wife. While the other gang members fled, Warren and Margot set fire to the entire building to cover their tracks. However, before lighting the fire, Margot had spotted a young Anna and her brother hiding underneath their bed. Anna eventually managed to escape the burning house, and shortly afterward, the paramedics pulled out her unconscious brother and revived him.

In the present timeline, the voice of Ioana often coerces Anna into harming herself, as if in retaliation for the fact that Anna killed Ioana. Three months before the “Bonfire Night” that is featured briefly in the prologue, Margot finds Anna at home, bleeding profusely from one such self-inflicted wound. To Anna’s surprise and gratitude, Margot tends to her without passing judgment. This show of kindness leaves Anna conflicted over her plans to kill Margot in long-overdue revenge, and she begins to change her mind about Margot. However, Anna’s husband, Drew, is livid when he discovers that Anna and Margot are developing a rapport.

At the same time, Nicu receives a video of Margot kissing Liv’s husband Brandon during a party at Liv’s house. Nicu questions her on the topic of infidelity, and although nothing else happened with Brandon, Liv inadvertently confesses to having engaged in an affair with a different man over the past few months. Furious, Nicu leaves Margot. A heartbroken Margot, believing that Liv is responsible for the video, hits with her car—a crime of opportunity when she spots Liv out on a run one day. When Margot is unable to find Liv’s pulse, she leaves Liv for dead; however, Brandon finds Liv and takes her to the hospital, where she eventually makes a full recovery. 

Liv later begins to remember bits and pieces of the car “accident.” She eventually recovers footage from a video recording device that she had been wearing the day of the run and becomes aware that Margot is the one who hit her.

Drew, who had driven past the site of Liv’s accident on the day it happened, suddenly remembers seeing Margot’s car parked there. He confronts Anna with this, using it as proof that Margot is just as murderous as she always was. (The narrative reveals that Drew is actually “Andrew,” Anna’s brother; the two of them changed their names when their Pakistani aunt and uncle adopted them after their parents’ deaths.) 

When Anna refuses to take revenge on Margot, Drew kidnaps Margot and traps her underneath the bonfire on Bonfire Night. Margot pleads with him to let her go, but he refuses, revealing his true identity and stating that she killed him first. However, Anna manages to alert the fire marshals in time, and Margot is rescued. Before Margot is taken away in the ambulance, she tells Anna that she and the gang broke into Anna’s house on Andrew’s tip-off; Anna’s brother is the same “Andy” who owed the gang money. Following this revelation, when Drew sneaks back into the house on the morning after Bonfire Night, Anna kills him in revenge for their parents’ deaths, and his voice promptly replaces Ioana’s as the voice in her head.

Once Margot is recuperating at home, she and Anna meet to confess their entire truths to each other. Anna reveals that she is the one who engineered Margot’s public downfall. In addition following Margot around for years and planting false, negative stories about her in the media, Anna discovered and broke the story of Margot and Nicu’s affair, and she also acted as Ioana’s manager to fuel the public’s hatred of her. When Ioana decided that she had had enough of being bitter, Anna killed her and made the death look like a suicide that was the result of Nicu and Margot’s actions. Margot, in turn, apologizes for what she did to Anna’s parents years ago; she asserts that she had no choice but to set fire to the shop, or else Warren would have killed her, too. She says that she tried to stop Warren from burning down the house when she discovered that Anna and Drew were there, but he didn’t listen. Margot also reveals that she is now pregnant with Drew’s child, as he was the man with whom she had been having a secret affair in the months before he tried to kill her.

Bound together by their intertwined, murderous history and Margot’s unborn child, Margot and Anna finally settle their differences. Angered by this alliance, Liv blackmails them both for money upon discovering Drew’s body in Anna’s basement. In response, Margot and Anna frame Liv and Brandon for Drew’s murder, and the couple is arrested. 

However, after the birth of Margot’s daughter, Ellie, Anna feels dissatisfied by the way that Margot is raising her niece, so she kills Margot and flees to Pakistan with Ellie. 

Margot’s voice is now firmly lodged inside Anna’s head. In Pakistan, Anna reads up on the continuing investigation into Drew, and she also follows the news of Margot’s death, for which Anna is now a suspect. In Anna’s mind, Margot’s voice reflects that she wishes she had been the one to kill Anna first.