All Tomorrow’s Photos by S.S. Genesee

This was another Stuff Your Kindle find, which is exciting because I had literally never heard of this book or this author before. ALL TOMORROW'S PHOTOS is a queer serial killer romance set in the 1970s. Maurice is a vain serial killer who murders women and then desecrates and photographs their corpses. Kenneth is a male nurse who is blind in one eye because of cataracts. When Maurice is going to his art class, he sees a picture of Kenneth where he modeled for his sister (also in the class) and thinks he's the most beautiful man he's ever seen. He begs his sister to put him in contact so he can photograph him too, which is how the romance begins... even as a detective begins to look at the mounting female bodies, circling closer and closer...

There were some things about this book I really enjoyed and some I enjoyed less so. First, the positives. The author did their own cover, I think, and they did an absolutely amazing job nailing the time period and the vibe. That goes for the slang and the set dressing in the book, too. I loved how music played such a prominent role in the story. I also liked how Maurice is both self-aware and not self-aware when it comes to his vanity. He's so arrogant but he's also a dork. I loved that.

The things I liked less were the contrast of the relationship with the violence of the murders. It felt like Maurice's character was very inconsistent, the way he behaved with Kenneth versus the way he was before. And maybe part of that is his ability to mask as a psychopath, but if so, this wasn't made clear in the narrative. And the blushing lovey-dovey relationship didn't really work for me given the knowledge of what Maurice was doing when he wasn't with Kenneth. I found myself skimming over a lot of their scenes together, which is never great in a romance. But while reading, it did kind of hit me that this has the vibes of a semi-dark yaoi from the 2000s, which also sometimes had these jarring shifts in tones, and given some of the dialogue and characterizations, I did wonder if maybe that was an inspo for this author, in which case, I'm not the target audience for this book but others definitely would be.

I'm not sorry I read this book and I thought it was a very creative and unusual dark romance premise, but I probably won't be reading further into the series.

2.5 out of 5 stars