How to Kill Your Family: THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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There’s no real drama. No point at which she is almost caught in the act which would have come as a welcome intermission. You’ll be gripped… Grace’s emotional detachment throughout will give you chills’ Rated 5 stars by COSMOPOLITAN How To Kill Your Family is a fantastic read for anyone who loves dark humour. It’s fun to find yourself anticipating the details of the next murder as she goes through them all and I found myself delighting in how clever she was when planning each one. By the end I was rooting for her to not just get out of jail for the one murder she didn’t commit but to fulfill her plan despite how awful she is. The round-up: The plague of these past years - if we exclude the pandemic, obviously - is the publishing industry’s obsession with creating a good-looking cover. Because you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but everybody does that ‘cause the cover is always a big deal! 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.

Grace Bernard is a thoroughly unlikeable person. Single-minded to the point of obsession about her plan to exact revenge, she freely exploits other people’s vulnerabilities to get what she needs. . To beat the boredom, Grace starts writing her life story, detailing the crimes she has committed, explaining how she’s been bumping off her estranged family in incredibly creative ways – think Midsomer murders and the inventive deaths on that TV show and you’re in the same ballpark.

Book Review

How unfair that she finds herself as a prisoner when nobody knows the crimes she actually committed...and why she killed those folks. 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 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) Overall, this is very easy to read, it’s well written, I love the darkly wry style of the author who has acquired a new fan! If now I can't even trust a nice pink cover with a girl and a shovel, I don't know what I can trust anymore.

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.Grace has a plan in life: revenge. I'm not here to criticise that, her father is awful and her family are all assholes; you go, girl! But good revenge needs a smart way to be accomplished. 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??? We meet Grace as she’s languishing in Limehouse prison for crime she didn’t commit. As you can guess from the blurb, that doesn’t mean she’s innocent, she’s far from it. 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. Addictive… Grace Bernard is one of the most intriguing and bewitching protagonists I've read in years’ EMMA GANNON