Hey there, Thelma and Louise. Have you met Kayla and Zorie?
They’re the protagonists of Christina Dotson’s debut novel, Love You to Death, a rollicking road trip that rolls into some very dark places as these two best friends dig themselves into deeper and deeper trouble. Since meeting in sixth grade while dealing with difficult family circumstances, they have been each other’s ride or die, despite Kayla’s father warning her that “being friends with Zorie would guarantee a life of messes.” Ironically, it was Kayla’s actions that led them both to a prison stint at the end of their senior year of high school.
As formerly incarcerated women, their job options are limited, and they’ve been working as housekeepers at a local motel, supplementing their incomes by crashing weddings and stealing gift envelopes. Although Kayla is determined to start anew and lead an honest life, another impulsive act puts her in a financial jam, forcing her to agree to join Zorie in one final wedding scam. Never mind that these two Black women will be uninvited guests at an antebellum-themed reception full of white folks.
Kayla notes early on that “this wedding reception is starting to feel like the beginning of a bad horror movie,” and her instincts are spot-on. After accidentally hitting someone with their car while fleeing the scene, the pair become wanted in several states for murder as they drive from Georgia to Texas in a series of stolen vehicles.
Dotson, who also works as a licensed clinical social worker in Kentucky, has a fine command of human behavior as well as a droll comic voice. For instance, Kayla begins to think that her housekeeping work was a dream job “compared to being homeless and on the run from the police with an overgrown toddler,” meaning Zorie. And to be fair to Kayla, at one point Zorie responds to a reminder that they’re wanted by the police by saying, “You get so worked up over the smallest things.”
Be forewarned—this is hardly a book for the faint of heart. Dotson is a fearless writer who takes her plot and runs with it in a deep, devilish way, offering up plenty of surprising twists. She sustains the tension of Love You to Death through a domino-like cascade of catastrophes, all the way to the bitter end.
