Grace Bernard is in Limehouse Prison serving a sentence for a crime she didn’t commit but that doesn’t mean to say she hasn’t committed some! To relieve the boredom and the inane chatter of cell mate Kelly she decides to write her astonishing story. This tell all explains exactly what she is guilty of! This is a novel about rejection and betrayal, revenge and retribution. I want these killings done—done well, yes, but I’m not an enthusiastic fan of homicide, researching the most fascinating and gruesome ways to kill. There’s a certain art to a good murder. I will admit to being impressed by the lengths that some people will go to, but I don’t want to get caught up in more and more extreme plans which eventually result in me hanging off a zip line through central London, decapitating someone with a samurai sword just for theatrics.

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 I also really loved the little insights into Grace’s societal views. They’re often added to the ends of paragraphs, and they’re caustic, witty, judgemental and completely deadpan. I have killed several people (some brutally, others calmly) and yet I currently languish in jail for a murder I did not commit. How To Kill Your Family is a book about Grace’s determination to kill her father’s side of the family having been planning it since she found out he left her mother to fend for herself despite being an incredibly wealthy individual. As aforementioned, Grace then goes on a killing spree of her father’s offspring and family in an attempt to, I presume, make herself feel better for the loss of her mother and take some revenge on him for never being there for her. How To Kill Your Family Plot – 3/5Grow up, this is childish, hypocritical and snobbish. I would maybe understand her anger if she was 12. Not 26. And once again we have the trope of the girl that’s so “unique” and so “different” from everyone else by just being as basic, stereotypically millennial, snobbish and arrogant as any other with just a touch of deranged and vindictive psycho. 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. 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 also takes the reader on a psychological journey of sorts. The novel’s protagonist, 28-year-old Grace Bernard, sets off on a mission to eliminate all members of her family with an end-goal of seeking revenge on her father, millionaire businessman and stereotypical playboy who abandoned her and her mother as a baby. 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.

How unfair that she finds herself as a prisoner when nobody knows the crimes she actually committed...and why she killed those folks. Overall, this compelling tale of calculated revenge was fast-paced, witty, and riveting, from beginning to end. 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

Take the plot of the Ealing film classic Kind Hearts of Coronets. Make your central character an anti-hero assassin in the vein of Villanelle from Killing Eve. Add in a lot of snarky comments about twenty-first century life and you get the essence of How to Kill Your Family. 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. 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! There is a twist towards the end. It’s a twist I didn’t see coming, yet, it fit, it made sense, I loved the irony. 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.

She plans with extreme precision and executes these plans with ease and no regrets. It is only on reflection that I realise just how vile her deeds were. While I was absorbed in her world, the violence and immorality of her acts was camouflaged by her planning, precision and rationalisation. 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.Early on in the book, Grace declares unfazed that she has killed six members of her family, yet she is in prison for a murder she didn’t commit. Then, she proceeds to write about all her murders, her motives and goes into exhaustive detail about how she carried them out. When 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.