Book sixteen of my summer reading challenge and another rogue pick up at the airport.
How To Kill Your Family
Bella Mackie
They say you can’t choose your family but you can kill them…
Meet Grace Bernard.
Daughter, sister, serial killer…
Grace has lost everything.
And she will stop at nothing to get revenge.
Bookshop.org | Goodreads | Amazon
I didn’t know a lot about this book going in and I’m kind of glad about that, I saw it in the bookshop, read the blurb and thought yip that sounds just up my street. I have to say it was not what I was expecting at all but in the best kind of way, that’s why I enjoy a random pick because it’s always a surprise and in this case a pleasant one.
I love Grace’s voice she is to the point, she is determined, she is manipulative and she is a bit chaotic but in an interesting way. The story is told through her eyes and she is not the kind of person that you would immediately like, as she is an unrepentant serial killer, but she is fascinating, and I did find myself rooting for her hoping that things would go her way.
The plot was fantastic, I enjoyed that Grace had a fairly unusual childhood and upbringing and that gave her the goal which mapped out her whole life, which subsequently is interrupted by an event that lands her in jail. I really liked the catch-22 situation that Grace finds herself up against, it was brilliant. Since Grace controls as much of her life as possible to reach her goal and then has to rely on someone else to try and get her out of jail, the tension this situation causes in the book was spot on. It had me flipping the pages desperate to know what was going to happen next.
Unfortunately what dropped this down from what was looking to possibly be a five-star read was the ending, I can’t tell you about it, and I’m sure there will be those that thought it was marvellous, and don’t get me wrong in a book that has some zany moments, it definitely added some shock value. However, I did not like it, I didn’t like that Grace lost her voice and I didn’t like who had a hand in it, I feel like I could have enjoyed an ending with the same outcome but just not how it got there. It actually made me pretty angry, and it felt very tacked on which didn’t help.
I did have to really dig deep to try and separate how it ended from the rest of the book so that I could write this review and even though the ending wasn’t what I had hoped, I think it shows just how invested I felt in the story and the character which is a testament to how well she is written. Overall it was a book that I was captivated by, Grace is a character who is both awful and fascinating, with a story that is dark but at times comical and I couldn’t tear myself away from it.
everywhere-and-nowhere.com 
It’s a shame about the ending as this sounds wonderful.
LikeLiked by 1 person