This book got a lot of publicity when first released with lots of 'fresh and exciting twist' kind of gushing.

Grace aims to pick off her dad's side of the family one by one by committing Killing Eve-esque-style murders. Image credit: “The Family” by James Francis Hopfensperger’, by Christian Collins, via Flickr ( CC BY-NC-SA 2. Given all the hoopla surrounding Bella Mackie’s novel, I was surprised how overwhelming tedious it turned out to be.The denouement is slightly more satisfying but the newcomer who suddenly pops up to deliver it is waif-like and thinly drawn - introducing a new voice at the very end of a tale to tie up loose ends neatly feels like something of a cop-out. I say it’s less alarming than you’d think as, despite being her blood relatives, they’re not really her family, since she had no relationship with any of them prior to their murders. This niggle and a certain twist at the end put my nose out of joint, though kudos to Mackie for pulling off something so unexpected. I love unreliable narrators, but Grace is simply sociopathic and judgemental; there’s no real sinister side to her nature.

Grace is clearly intelligent for example— she comes up with ingenious ways to kill her relatives without leaving any trail. The impossible financial logistics of Grace’s life and revenge plan aside, How to Kill Your Family seemed torn between channeling the glamorous, salacious Villanelle in a neon pink Molly Goddard dress versus wanting Grace to also be a ‘woman of the people’.She is brought up in a foster family who is rich and has a lot of opportunities in life, but she hates rich people. Although her feelings could be understandable, and could have been written in such a way as to allow for her character to grow, there was a distinct sense that we should be agreeing with her full stop even when she is spewing hate for no discernible reason.

She wants to make him suffer and wants him to know exactly who’s behind it and why before bumping him off too. I am lucky enough to be sent loads of advance review copies of books to read – often unsolicited from publishers. The format made this incredibly difficult to read, as it was very slow paced, quite disjointed, and involved a lot of telling. You would need to give full and clear credit to “Karen Heenan-Davies, Book Talk” with links to the original content. In a nod to the Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, twentysomething Londoner Grace Bernard sets out to avenge her late single mum and the privations of their shared life by bumping off the fashion tycoon father who’s refused to acknowledge her, though not before dispatching every member of his pampered clan.She’s cold, calculating, manipulative and an absolute sociopath who feels absolutely nothing and seriously has lost all effort to care about anyone but herself and her mission. A caveat: there is a political jab made early in the book, so I set it aside, but the positive reviews of Goodreads friends (Ceecee, Michael, and Jayne) led me to pick it up again. the entire book was FAR too long-winded, full of so many unnecessary details/stories of the protagonist rambling on. This immediately loses any sense of suspense at what is to follow, as you know that she will be talking about seven murders, one of which she didn't do and six that she did.