The synopsis says: “When Sally kills her husband with a cast-iron skillet, she’s more fearful of losing her kids than disposing of a fresh corpse. That just wouldn’t be fair—not after twenty years married to a truly terrible man. But Sally isn’t the only woman in town reaching the brink. Soon, Sally has formed an extremely unusual self-help group, and between them there are four bodies to hide. Can they all figure out the perfect way to bury their husbands . . . and get away with it?” 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! Amidst the chaos of the calculated revenge plot are flashes of humour and Grace’s hilarious but true observations about the mundanity and bizarreness of life. It is a surprisingly uplifting story in places and while I never felt that her victims deserved their ultimate fates, Grace’s certainty and confidence was almost able to convince me of the necessity of her deeds. 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 of the main themes of the book was about class, but it wasn’t really discussed in any profound way, and it actually became quite trite after a while. basically the whole book involved snipes at the rich/the upper classes (which i’m usually all here for) but THEN i discovered that the author of this book is alan rusbridger’s daughter and her grandfather is a baron….so she clearly moves in some privileged social circles herself, not exactly a working class hero. after that little discovery, the constant digs at privileged white people prompted a few eye rolls from me.

A funny, compulsive read about family dysfunction and the media’s obsession with murder’ SUNDAY TIMES STYLE Grow 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. 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.

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. When she hit 30 that year, she remembers thinking everything felt different. “I started running and continued seeing the therapist … all the worries and panic and irrational thoughts and not being able to get out of bed went away. I was able to live on my own for the first time and travel and do all the things I couldn’t do in my 20s. It felt like a new lease of life. I felt like a human being and not like a sad, empty shell pretending to be a human being which is what my 20s felt like”. 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. I thought from the opening couple of chapters that I was about to be proved wrong. How to Kill Your Family had a strong narrative voice and some amusingly cynical comments about the empty lives of rich people. But it went downhill rapidly.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. . 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. Grace is clearly intelligent for example— she comes up with ingenious ways to kill her relatives without leaving any trail. Yet she completely misreads the character of her cell-mate in prison. She is scathing about wealthy people with their expensive tastes in clothing, wine, and houses yet after her mother’s death she was raised by a high-income couple who taught her to enjoy the finer things in life. So Grace has benefited from a similar privileged life that she criticises other people for enjoying. 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.