I may or may not have picked up this book in a moment of frustration with my family 😬 😫. I bought it, and it stayed unread on my shelf for ages until, in a moment of boredom, I picked it up over Christmas after learning it had been picked up for a Netflix show starring Anya Taylor-Joy.
So, I went in with certain high expectations, and for a while, the book was delivered. But, things got repetitive too fast and the ending was simply atrocious.
About How to Kill Your Family
I have killed several people (some brutally, others calmly) and yet I currently languish in jail for a murder I did not commit.
When I think about what I actually did, I feel somewhat sad that nobody will ever know about the complex operation that I undertook. Getting away with it is highly preferable, of course, but perhaps when I’m long gone, someone will open an old safe and find this confession. The public would reel. After all, almost nobody else in the world can possibly understand how someone, by the tender age of 28, can have calmly killed six members of her family. And then happily got on with the rest of her life, never to regret a thing.
When Grace Bernard discovers her absentee millionaire father has rejected her dying mother’s pleas for help, she vows revenge and sets about to kill every member of his family.
But then Grace is imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit.
~ Synopsis from GoodReads
My Review
What a disappointment this book was. I was completely attracted by the title; I thought it would be a dark-humour mystery, but the humour was geared a lot younger, and while it’s funny, I found it a bit too harsh and cynical.
It took me a little while to get into this one. I didn’t particularly like Grace at any point. She gave me a couple of chuckles, but generally, she isn’t my sort of person—very arrogant, self-serving, and self-important. I don’t mind a protagonist with faults, but when the cons outweigh the pros, as they do with her personality, I find it hard to enjoy a character. I didn’t ever really enjoy hers.
After I’d reached the halfway point, I sped up and finished it in a day or so. It was alright, and I didn’t have a bad time reading it, but it was firmly in the slightly below-average range of how I rate books in my head.
As it was a debut novel, I’m giving the author the benefit of the doubt at the moment. Her writing could remain the same (is she vicariously writing her characters, is she anything like Grace?) but if the characters are a wee bit better I’ll be more on board. Looking forward to seeing what comes next, but I’ve certainly been more excited by an author’s second novel than I am this.
