Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Funny and furious and strangely uplifting. Grace is a bitter and beguiling anti-hero with a keen eye for social analysis – even in her most grisly deeds, you never stop rooting for her’ PANDORA SYKES ONE CRITICISM: The author included some political venom and BDSM mentions (in different parts of the book!) that could have been easily deleted without compromising the storyline.
How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie: read an extract How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie: read an extract
I highly recommend it if you’re looking for an original and sometimes outrageously entertaining story, but be advised this is definitely an ‘R’-rated read. How To Kill Your Family is the ideal how-to guide. Within a week of finishing this book, I had successfully killed my family. And gotten away with it. Grace is an intriguing character who at times, the reader can only admire for her gumption, drive and unapologetic cruelty. I don’t aspire to become a Grace-like psychopathic killer, but I would like to imitate certain aspects of her strong but complicated character in my own life. Her ambition and determinism is, while directed in completely the wrong places, inspiring. She is exactly what a woman is told she shouldn’t be. She is goal driven, selfish and behaves in a way that diametrically opposes the stereotypical image of a subdued woman. Nobody would consider Grace a role-model but her sense of freedom from the many expectational chains placed on almost every human being, must have made her an incredibly cathartic character to write about.I've been wanting to read a good anti-hero type story for a while, and though I've had my eye on the Sweetpea books, this one caught my eye due to the cover and the hype it received.
BBC Radio 4 - How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie, Episode 7
If you like snark, irony, and dark humor, and are willing to not take the book too seriously this is fun and fresh. If you liked Dexter, and/or the humor of Joe in You, or Paul in Best Day Ever, then you will love Grace. The twist toward the end was the icing on the cake. Not only that, but the plot felt kind of weak. There were so many weak points in the murders she committed. At one point I wondered if there had been witnesses, and it turns out THERE WAS. Okay, this is going under a spoiler tag, but yeah, apparently her secret half brother had been following her all along, and she never noticed because she's an idiot. She thinks she's being so secretive, and yet carries out at least three of the murders with witnesses. And then she does the incredibly stupid thing of writing out her confession in prison where her cellmate can read it (AND DOES). It's just so stupid. Those who hated the ending are forgetting how ridiculously silly Grace was for not thinking of these things. i was attracted to this book bc of the anti-heroine promise as i love an unlikeable, morally grey female character - but grace as a character was far too muddled, and it was clear that the author still hadn’t fully fleshed her out. she was clearly meant to be a character in the vein of villanelle from ‘killing eve’, but she was nowhere near as interesting or compelling Addictive… Grace Bernard is one of the most intriguing and bewitching protagonists I've read in years’ EMMA GANNON There’s no real drama. No point at which she is almost caught in the act which would have come as a welcome intermission.
Advance Praise
it was trying too hard to sound funny/witty - mostly with a lot of millennial humour, and constant snipes at influencers and internet-obsessed young people (ok boomer) HOW TO KILL YOUR FAMILY takes the proverbial saying "Don't get mad, get even" to exciting new levels. Yes, this book is truly in a league of its own. It's chilling and disturbing; yet, also LOL humorous. When she hit 30 that year, she remembers thinking everything felt different. “I started running and continued seeing the therapist … all the worries and panic and irrational thoughts and not being able to get out of bed went away. I was able to live on my own for the first time and travel and do all the things I couldn’t do in my 20s. It felt like a new lease of life. I felt like a human being and not like a sad, empty shell pretending to be a human being which is what my 20s felt like”.
How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie | Goodreads
What. A. Book. Huge thank you to @boroughpress and @netgalley for my copy! How to Kill Your Family is hilarious, dark, gripping - it is at some points completely batshit and it’s one of the best things I’ve read this year. Ironically, Grace was in jail for a murder she did not commit, yet she was never charged for the multiple murders that she did commit.i thought it was going to follow the protagonist plotting all the different murders - but that was barely focused on at all. instead of focusing on the story/plot, the protagonist goes on irrelevant rants about social/cultural observations which were clearly made by the author e.g. there was a big passage about the dangers of smart devices and smart homes. if the author wanted to write about these observations, why didn’t she just write an essay collection??? I have killed several people (some brutally, others calmly) and yet I currently languish in jail for a murder I did not commit.
Great Deal 
New Comment