How to Kill Your Family Review (WITH SPOILERS)

 I picked this book up from my local Tesco shop as it was familiar to me from other reviewers on the internet. It had an intriguing cover, indicating that the book will be filled with female rage, something that I enjoy reading and can engage with. However, very quickly into diving into ‘How to Kill Your Family’ I realized this will be one of the worst books I have read this year, if not longer. Although with an interesting concept and good potential for an effective satire, everything else was just…bad. The characters were flat to the point where they do not work even as symbols, the plot was predictable and stale and the social critique read more like an edgy middle schoolers diary than an actual published work.

The majority book is actually a prison diary of Grace Bernard, a young woman who is in prison for a murder she claims has not committed. However, she did commit six other murders, all members of her family. While waiting for her appeal process to start, she goes through those murders and gives her side of the story. This was a very compelling concept to me, especially when it is revealed that her biological father and his family were all aware of her existence but did nothing to help her struggling mother and herself, as they are one of the richest and well known families in the country. At first, Grace seemed pedantic and careful in these murders, with a just cause and understandable hatred for the billionaires who could have helped her but chose not to. They are indeed filthy rich, and from Grace’s point of view, also vapid, empty and just frankly bad people that the world is probably better off without. The description of the meticulous planning of each of these murders was interesting, although at times, I had to suspend my disbelief that it could have happened the way it did and her not getting caught. 

However, as the reading went on, I started disliking Grace more and more. She came across as ‘not like other girls’ kind of girl, constantly going on weird tangents about the world around her that were extremely shallow and not as deep as she would have probably liked to believe they are. Throughout the novel, Grace explicitly goes on saying that she read so many ‘real’ feminists books, not like the basic ones. I guess this was supposed to show us something about her character, but Grace hated almost every other woman in this whole story, except maybe her mother who she just pitied. Every time a woman did anything that is considered girly, Grace directly made fun of that girl. In my book, that is not very feminist of her. Actually, Grace held herself to such a high esteem without much substance to back that up it was ridiculous at times. I expected a lot more of a suspenseful gritty thriller of a young woman getting her revenge through her own intellect and strengths, but instead these long winded, pointless rants took up such a huge part of the book I honestly started skimming through them as I found them laughable.

The main theme of these rants and the criticism is class and class structure. For the big part of her life, Grace grew up with a single mother that struggled financially but after her mother’s passing, she did start living with her best friend’s family who is firmly upper middle class, if not more. From her perspective, they are overbearing and hypocritical at times but my impression is that their intentions are good, albeit misdirected. I found it really ironic that Grace kept making quips at both this family and her biological family she is murdering. Again, while I have a feeling that the author thought these observations are profound, they read very surface level and without any substance. Yes, we know rich people can be bastards who abuse others, what’s new?

I am not even going to start talking about other characters in the novel, as we only ever get to learn about them through Grace’s extremely judgemental and condescending attitude towards everything and everyone. The attitude she has towards her only friend Jimmy whose family took her in when she had nowhere else to go is awful and it kept making me think why is he still sticking around. His fiance did turn out to be not a very good person, but Grace’s insistence on talking about the girl’s eating disorder really grinded my gears. She kept this way of thinking about everyone in the book to the point I realized Grace is the problem, not literally everyone else around her. While in prison, you can also imagine the way she is talking about her fellow female inmates. 

The ending had a plot twist, if you can call it that. As it turns out, she is not her father’s only illegitimate child and his son actually took a different approach to take revenge, by getting close to their biological father. Far from a superior mastermind Grace wishes herself to be, she leaves her diary with plenty of evidence of her misdeeds laying about to her cellmate who is able to take photos of it and send it to this guy for blackmail purposes. Instead, this guy is the new heir apparent to the money and business as the only surviving son, essentially rendering Grace’s revenge plan pointless. I am not sure how the author was expecting me to feel about this plot twist, but at this point I was so fed up with everyone and everything in this book, that I honestly did not care about any of it. I just wanted to finish the book.

I ended up rating this ⅖ for an interesting concept, but an absolutely awful execution. Nothing about this book worked for me at all and I just wanted to finish it so I can write a review knowing the full story. I do not think I will read Bella Mackie again, although the ending made me believe that the sequel is planned for this book?


Did you read this book? What were your thoughts? Did you agree with my review or did you really enjoy it?
Let me know!

source: https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/