one of the main themes of the book was about class, but it wasn’t really discussed in any profound or nuanced way, and it actually became quite trite after a while. Making everything and everyone — bobble hat wearers, old people, influencers, fat people and environmentalists — a target for snide remarks didn’t make the book any funnier. This book has such huge twists and turns and laugh out loud moments within a hugely dark and devious story, examining wealth, privilege, high society, class and what family means.

One thing is when you expect something from a book and then you realize that's not going to happen, another story is when the book is also outrageously bad. It made me think that it’s a good job that I haven’t been given a reason to wreak bloody revenge on anyone. The impossible financial logistics of Grace’s life and revenge plan aside, How to Kill Your Family seemed torn between channeling the glamorous, salacious Villanelle in a neon pink Molly Goddard dress versus wanting Grace to also be a ‘woman of the people’.How to Kill Your Family is the first-person narrative of Grace Bernard, a young woman who has waged a campaign of hatred against a millionaire and his family. uk) sent me some absolutely gorgeous loose leaf delights to sample over the summer, and one that I absolutely fell for was the ‘Exotic Chai of Madagascar’. Surprisingly, even though I was privy to all of the grisly details of Grace's horrific crimes, I never stopped rooting for her. And I have just guessed, and had it confirmed that it is the partner of the childhood friend whom the protagonist hasn't killed, but is in prison for). The constant telling and lack of showing means you are left feeling somewhat distant from the story and can't really deduce things for yourself.

I started Book for Thought in 2014 as a space to record my thoughts on books I read and be a part of the wonderful online book community.

I understand that these flaws in the case were part of the reason she was able to launch the successful appeal needed to get her out of prison and able to carry on her murder missions but it just missed the mark for me. The descriptions of the murders are like mini films in their own right (perfect episodes of a TV series should any TV execs be reading this? When an older man offers up an undeniably un-witty comment that’s clearly repeated regularly, Grace ‘idly wondered if he had a wife who’d dearly like me to dispose of him too’. The book flits between the present day in prison back to Grace’s childhood and then through the various murders.

the entire book was FAR too long-winded, full of so many unnecessary details/stories of the protagonist rambling on. I say it’s less alarming than you’d think as, despite being her blood relatives, they’re not really her family, since she had no relationship with any of them prior to their murders.

Grace is not an angel, and this may sound terrible, but I really liked her and rooted for her the whole time. 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. Writing from prison, Grace tells the reader: “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. Yes, she’d made a vow as a young teenager to revenge the harm she thought her family had done to her mother but I found it hard to believe that she’d still be following that plan more than a decade later.

But she’s charming and her backstory is genuinely sad and she shows hints of vulnerability often enough to win the reader’s sympathy. We got sections where Grace described how she plotted her next murder, then in exacting detail we got the killing ( with a confusing switch to present tense). Speechify lets you listen to any text, including all books in the world with the best voices out there! The thing is, Mackie had a solid base story; a disgruntled lovechild plots revenge against the rich daddy who abandoned her and his family. I want to shed a tear but I could not care less as her mother died of cancer and not from overworking or anything like that.It’s Killing Eve in style, with some awesome scenes, some brilliant thinking and fantastic character development. How to Kill Your Family’ is less alarming than it sounds, but it’s still a darkly comic first-person narrative from the point of view of a young woman named Grace Bernard, who’s in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. She is brought up in a foster family who is rich and has a lot of opportunities in life, but she hates rich people. Raised by her less than wealthy late French mother, who begged and pleaded for Grace to be acknowledged by the father who had an affair with her mother, Grace is thirsty to avenge her mother’s pride and to take what’s rightfully hers. Caught between the post-Christmas blues and the happy warmth of Trinity, the term can sometimes feel like an endless period of waiting and misery.