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. Grace is the lead in How To Kill Your Family– yes she meets other people and has some mildly interesting interactions with others, but every story is told from her very opinionated point of view. And this is where it began to grate on me. I’m a fairly opinionated person myself, however, Grace seemed to have a fairly strong assumption of almost every single individual she meets and even doesn’t meet. She starts to become quite unlikeable and egotistical throughout with her thoughts and musings becoming degrading and almost mean at some points.

Addictive… Grace Bernard is one of the most intriguing and bewitching protagonists I've read in years’ EMMA GANNONWhen it got to the twist in the tale at the end, I was surprised for a moment and then thought ‘well that explains it (audiobook narration)’. Then felt like an ignoramus due to the probability given the nature of the characters in question.

The idea is promising, Grace is a likeable character and the first chapters really hook you, even if you don't understand everything. But from there on is just a bunch of facts of her life after another, casual things that happened to her, the only two people still in her life and that horrible cellmate she unfortunately has. 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 The novel follows Grace Bernard on a quest to get revenge against her father and her family - Grace is, frankly, so immediately unlikable and snobbish that I almost didn’t keep going past the first chapter. I’m glad I did though, because while Grace is, yes, unlikable, she’s also hilarious and smart and surprisingly talented at committing serious crimes. I talked in my review of The Penelopiad about why I think needing to immediately like the characters I’m reading about limits the reading I do, and How To Kill Your Family is another amazing example of how good it can be to push past that. Almost every character is infuriating, but that didn’t stop me from speeding through it and loving it. How unfair that she finds herself as a prisoner when nobody knows the crimes she actually committed...and why she killed those folks.

Book Review

There’s no real drama. No point at which she is almost caught in the act which would have come as a welcome intermission.

The ending broke my heart a little, but I didn’t feel like it affected my enjoyment of the book at all. In fact, I found myself racing to the end to digest all the information. The story follows Grace’s plan to kill her family, for crimes committed against both her mother and herself. I didn’t find the reasoning for the vendetta totally compelling, but as the book progressed, I felt it actually didn’t matter. It was really fun following her process - doing the research, plotting the death and then carrying it out. It’s not always straightforward (it would be a dull story if it was) but it’s quite the wild ride. 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)While in prison for a murder she did not commit, she begins to keep a journal in which she documents the six murders she did commit. Each death is described in detail, Grace relishing in her ability to plan and execute killings so flawlessly that she was never suspected. When I think about what I actually did, I feel somewhat sad that nobody will ever know about the complex operation that I undertook. Getting away with it is highly preferable, of course, but perhaps when I’m long gone, someone will open an old safe and find this confession. The public would reel. After all, almost nobody else in the world can possibly understand how someone, by the tender age of 28, can have calmly killed six members of her family. And then happily got on with the rest of her life, never to regret a thing. From prison she regales us with her story, and what a story it is. Filled with dark humor, snark (my fave!), and the juicy details of her life along with the creative offing of six members of her family, she had me laughing out loud. Kudos to the author for writing such an engaging villain. We meet Grace in prison. But as rings true throughout the novel as a whole, she is there for reasons we later discover are far more complicated than would be contained in a straightforward murder – arrest – imprisonment plot.

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.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. SOME ADVICE: If reading a book entitled HOW TO KILL YOUR FAMILY deeply troubles you, close your eyes, hold your nose, snag this book.....and READ ON. How To Kill Your Family is a dark, sometimes brutal, delight of a novel that had me giggling one moment and cringing the next. This is not a cozy story, but there is PLENTY of dark humor and snark, which I adore. Grace is not an angel, and this may sound terrible, but I really liked her and rooted for her the whole time.