Anyone out there take magnesium before bed?
Having frequent struggles with restless leg syndrome, I will on occasion pop a couple of magnesium supplements before bed to take the edge off, knowing full well I will also likely experience a really vivid dream.
This in and of itself is not a bad thing — take the other night, for example, when I was in an upstairs attic room of sorts with my daughter and soon-to-be daughter-in-law and Prince shows up with racks of clothing he is getting ready to thrift and lets us take first crack at it before he packs it up.
Good times!
Other nights, though, the dreams are of the nightmare kind and it’s like I have to break through the waking plane to my slumbering state as if I am in internal loudspeaker, to remind myself “You.Are.Dreaming.Do.Not.Freak.Out.” And Hannah Deitch’s “Killer Potential” is a lot like one of those dreams.
Deitch’s main protagonist, Evie Gordon, is a very late 20-something who is squandering her academic potential living paycheck to paycheck as a tutor in Los Angeles. A handful of clients gets her a sneak peek behind the curtain of the uber wealthy, which only solidifies her cynical POV on life.
Suddenly, without warning, Evie finds herself with two dead bodies on her hands and a mysterious voice asking for help from the recesses of a closet. And before she realizes it, she’s on the lam with a semi-mute, traumatized stranger.
What comes next is a roller coaster journey from one coast to another and back again as Evie and Jae try to stay at least one step ahead of the cops determined to catch the killer. It’s a journey of self-discovery for Evie as she navigates a budding relationship with Jae while considering what her future holds, all while re-examining her past choices in life that brought her to this moment in time.
Deitch is at her most compelling with the narrative when it comes to those panicky moments that would have the real me screaming at the sleeping me to wake up. You can, in fact, have waking nightmares. Evie is living one. From a thriller standpoint, a reader can do far worse than this novel. It’s not going to be Stephen King, but there’s only one Stephen King, so maybe an unfair comparison.
It’s a fast moving read that hooked me to the point I stayed up far too late on a school night to see what happens. I personally may have preferred a little more nuance to what makes Jae tick — the abrupt pivot felt … abrupt. But I couldn’t stop reading the story, so that tells you what you need to know.
If you want to kick off 2026 with a mystery, “Killer Potential” will check that box.
LitzyDitz 