Book Review: The Engagement Ring Killer by Franklin Christopher
The Engagement Ring Killer
Series: The Killer Series #1
Author: Franklin Christopher
Published: February 1, 2026
Kindle: 252 pages
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: February 3-19, 2026
Jessica’s Rating: 3 stars
Book Description:
28 Days. 28 Chapters. 28 Women.
One killer hiding in plain sight.
The night of her engagement party, Mya’s engagement ring finger is severed in a violent incident. She staggers into the street covered in blood and is thrust into the spotlight. But as Valentine’s Day approaches, she’s not the only one, women across the city begin turning up mutilated—and murdered.
As fear spreads and secrets surface, Mya starts questioning every man in her life. One of them could be the Engagement Ring Killer. Things take a turn for the worst when one of the mutilated women turns up dead on Valentine’s Day, Mya realizes she didn’t just lose a finger, she could possibly lose her life.
This year, Valentine’s Day is all month long.
Jessica’s Review:
A couple of things from the book description that actually aren’t:
- The novel seemingly appears to be an ‘advent calendar’ that lasts the whole month of February: 28 chapters in 28 days. But the novel does not take place as one chapter equals one day. Being it wasn’t actually one day per chapter I saw no point in reading it as an ‘advent book’ even though I started it on February 3rd. I also ended the novel on February 19th.
- The book description also gave this reader the impression that we are going to have a death per chapter, which is a death per day. That doesn’t happen, so I was disappointed. In fact, the first death does not happen until several chapters in, so my expectations were not met and the title wasn’t fully accurate for me. Even in the novel the news calls the villain ‘The Engagement Ring Chopper’ as the first victims were maimed, not killed.
There were also grammar errors and possible formatting issues on my kindle. Normally I won’t let this bother me, but the significant number of these issues took away some of my enjoyment of reading the novel. I even debated on DNFing the book. I decided to continue it since it is shorter and I am glad I did as I overall enjoyed it. I wanted to know what was going to ultimately happen.
The chapters were short which made this a quick read. It was fast paced and I was intrigued with the directions the novel went. There was also a character named Franklin and being that is the author’s name I was debating on if the author was including himself in the novel. There were twists throughout the novel that changed directions for me so many times. There was one open door sex scene. I was not expecting that and for me it wasn’t necessary.
Despite the issues mentioned, I would give the author another chance. It just seemed like he was in a hurry to get the book to readers when it could have used some more editing/proofreading/ advanced readers.
The Engagement Ring Killer receives a strong 3 stars from me.