While I appreciate what the author was trying to do here, the class commentary was just not effective and in fact more often than not was reduced to a slew of stereotypes and never-ending judgment with absolutely no foundation to stand on. Even with that I still quite enjoyed it, although I agree the film is in a completely different league. 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.

If you’d like to read something a little darker, but something which brings humour too, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Shallow, self-indulged; a mean snob- it’s hard to listen to 9 hours (audiobook) of someone you fundamentally dislike. Vital to the success of any hunter-dealer is an ability to negotiate with the dragons who invariably guard sought-after treasures. I didn’t DNF this as I kept hoping I would actually start enjoying it, or at least find it funnier than I had so far, but unfortunately I never did.Grace is clearly intelligent for example— she comes up with ingenious ways to kill her relatives without leaving any trail. A seemingly firmly tongue-in-cheek dark comedy that didn't really work for me at all, the composition and plotting were fine, but the core concept pf targeting an entire family for the deeds of one, just didn't sit that well for m, of for the protagonists in my most humble opinion. She isn’t what a woman is expected to be; she’s an angry, villainous, vengeful, cruel and a raging snob. An unhappy Grace Bernard is in Limehouse Prison after having been convicted for murder, and she has every reason to be upset, she is an innocent woman. I could imagine Grace flicking through Hello magazine, an eyebrow raised at yet another photo spread of a living room with grey velvet sofas and a marble fireplace.

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). Grace aims to pick off her dad's side of the family one by one by committing Killing Eve-esque-style murders. I got used to it and I can see that it was an interpretation of Grace’s character but I was irritated by the way the narration ignored the rhythm of the text and sometimes buried punchlines. The combination of this lack of awareness and her reliance on improvisation and luck over planning and preparation took a lot of the tension out of the various killings that she committed.

I also didn’t see the ending coming and I was so mixed up by how I felt about this and that is no bad thing!

She could make herself angry enough to commit to violence when it was needed but she seemed largely unaware of the risks that she was taking. 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.

As this is such a 'hot read' on multiple bestseller lists I felt kind of bad for my non popular view, only to see that the Goodreads rating is actually just 3. It’s absolutely Kind Hearts and Coronets down to the list on the back of the picture but didn’t see this mentioned in other reviews. The book started out strong but slowly started its slow descent downhill, right up until it crashed and burned at the end. This was a fabulously fun crime read, I just could not help liking Grace, my only gripe was with the final twists which come out of the blue and not how I would preferred to see the book end. It is a fantastic debut fiction novel from Bella Mackie and has made me very excited to read her future works.

I enjoyed the journal form, even though it made very little sense to me why Grace should ever want to commit to paper a full account of every murder she committed and so far got away with. Which is ironic, as she actually did murder six people as part of a cunningly executed revenge scheme. 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.

He had even rejected her dying mother's pleas for him to support Grace, who at that point was a pre-teen, after her death. How To Kill Your Family does lack character development in any character other than the anti-hero protagonist Grace but I found this to contribute effectively to the unusual situation where we as readers are rooting for the serial killer protagonist and feeling very little sympathy for her victims.