How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie: A Book Review

You know those books you buy because you've seen so many people rave about it? This is how I came to buy How To Kill Your Family. Bella Mackie's debut book is based around Grace Bernard, a woman who is on a mission to murder her entire family. I know it sounds like a complete horror, but, weirdly enough, it has an incredibly dark sense of humour.

So, let's set the scene...

Grace Bernard is seeking revenge on her father Simon Artemis for abandoning her when she was a child. Grace aims to pick off her dad's side of the family one by one by committing Killing Eve-esque-style murders. Each murder is very different from each other, a couple quite brutal. 

At the start of the book, we see Grace going to Marbella to kill off her grandparents. Then we see the second chapter jump to the present day where Grace is in prison - for a murder she DIDN'T commit. Obviously, I won't go into too much detail as to how that happens. However, it's interesting to read how she handles prison in the book. We don't see too many dominant side characters in this book, only her friend Jimmy who has stuck by her during the bad times (he isn't aware of her family-esque murdering spree).

So, what are my thoughts on How To Kill Your Family?

One thing I definitely loved about this book is the dark sense of humour. Grace calls a spade a spade and I love her blunt honesty. Something I was surprised at during the book is even though I disliked the main character, I still wanted to keep reading through. Usually for me, when I take a dislike to one of the main characters, I feel like it's a slog to read through the rest of the book. In this instance, it didn't feel like that at all, which was surprising. 

Ok, Grace is nothing compared to Villanelle on Killing Eve. But she definitely takes particular care when planning each murder and her execution of them. 

One thing I didn't like about the book is that some of the chapters were very long and drawn out. Some were 30-40 pages long, which is quite long for a chapter. It felt like at some points, there were lots of needless bits of writing which could have been edited out. 

All in all, How To Kill Your Family is a good read. This book is perfect for anyone who has or likes a dark sense of humour.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this book - have you read How To Kill Your Family?