How to Kill Your Family: THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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The story in How To Kill Your Family is fairly simple – we start off with Grace in Limehouse Prison for a murder she actually didn’t commit retelling the tales of some murders she did commit. It sounds like a really good premise and one that could have been executed so much better.

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. A funny, compulsive read about family dysfunction and the media's obsession with murder' SUNDAY TIMES STYLE it was trying too hard to sound funny/witty - mostly with a lot of millennial humour, and constant snipes at influencers and internet-obsessed young people (ok boomer)The novel follows Grace Bernard on a quest to get revenge against her father and her family - Grace is, frankly, so immediately unlikable and snobbish that I almost didn’t keep going past the first chapter. I’m glad I did though, because while Grace is, yes, unlikable, she’s also hilarious and smart and surprisingly talented at committing serious crimes. I talked in my review of The Penelopiad about why I think needing to immediately like the characters I’m reading about limits the reading I do, and How To Kill Your Family is another amazing example of how good it can be to push past that. Almost every character is infuriating, but that didn’t stop me from speeding through it and loving it.

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. What. A. Book. Huge thank you to @boroughpress and @netgalley for my copy! How to Kill Your Family is hilarious, dark, gripping - it is at some points completely batshit and it’s one of the best things I’ve read this year. 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. The moment a teenage Grace discovers her millionaire, playboy dad rejected her and her dying mother’s pleas for help, Grace has dreamt of revenge. She wants to make him suffer and wants him to know exactly who’s behind it and why before bumping him off too.Addictive... one of the most intriguing and bewitching protagonists I've read in years' EMMA GANNON Despite it all, I was very entertained and thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook. When a voice can confidently convey attitude and inflection of numerous characters, you know that you’re in for a treat.