Hello, bookworms!

Happy Monday, I hope you had a lovely weekend. I spent time with some friends on Saturday and studied on Sunday, so I had a good time, more or less. Today I am here with the first mystery-thriller review of the year. Each month, I buddy read one mystery and/or thriller with my partner in crime Vitt and I then write a review for it. This is the first time I'm doing it in English, but I have decided to call it 'Case 13' anyways, since I have already written twelve articles in 2021.

In January, we picked How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie, which is sort of a comedic thriller I had seen online everywhere. Seen, but heard nothing about, so I was curious to see whethere we liked it or not. Sadly, I did not enjoy it, but I am still happy to have read it, because it was something different from the usual, so it was interesting nonetheless.

About the book
Title: How To Kill Your Family
Author: Bella Mackie
Publisher: The Borough Press
Publication date: 10 June 2021
Pages: 355

Plot, as stated on Goodreads
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. Readers have a front row seat as Grace picks off the family one by one – and the result is as and gruesome as it is entertaining in this wickedly dark romp about class, family, love… and murder. But then Grace is imprisoned for a murder she didn't commit.

My rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Review
I don't know where to start, to be honest, so I'll start by telling you a fun fact about the author that Vitt told me: Bella Mackie's family is actually quite rich, apparently. One has to wonder if this book isn't a fantasy of the author. I am kidding, of course; Bella Mackie herself stated that to be able to write such a book, you have to have a healthy relationship with your family, and I have to agree with her. I don't think she could have published a book of this kind, if she actually despised her family. You never know, though…

Anyways, my biggest issue with this book is that I felt like the author was trying too hard: trying too hard to be clever, trying too hard to be provocative, trying too be funny.

At the beginning, I was very intrigued by Grace as a character. She is totally unhinged and extremely narcissistic, in no way a likeable character, but I am a lover of unlikeable characters, so that was cool for me. However, after a few chapters, I became bored, because I found that she had no depth whatsoever. It was like the author thought that, since she is such a "weird" character, she didn't have to work as hard on her personality as one usually does. I don't know, maybe it has something to do with the comedic/satyrical intent, but it did not work for me. I wanted more character building and less pretentiousness from the author. A character that in some ways reminded me and Vitt of Grace is Gina Linetti from Brooklyn Nine-Nine; I feel like Gina is an example of a well written unhinged narcissist. Grace is almost there, but not quite, and I was left a bit disappointed.

The other characters were unlikeable as well, but they had so little page time (at least for me), that I have nothing to say about them, really. If there were a little less characters, maybe I would have enjoyed them more. Are you sensing a pattern here? When they say "Less is more" they are not kidding, and the author should have followed this mantra.

As far as the plot is concerned, I did not like knowing from the beginning (it's in the synopsis as well) that Grace was incarcerated for a crime she did not commit. I think it would have been more thrilling to let the reader believe she was in for one of her murders, at least for a bit, because it quickly became boring to learn about the killing, when I already knew she did not get caught. I quite liked the different ways in which Grace killed them all, that was the only thing keeping me interested in the whole thing, but other than that… Well, suffice to say that I often forgot I had to read this book.

The plot twist at the end is one of the cheapest I have ever read and I hated it; I did not want to believe what I was reading, because I may have given this book a 2.5 or even a 3, before those last chapters. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to keep that plot twist through rounds of editing, but it really ruined the book for me. I closed the book (or shut my Kindle down, as I was reading it digitally) feeling utterly disappointed by this book, and as a reader, it's one of the worst way to be left by a book.

Style-wise, I have already briefly mentioned that this book is a little bit too much and this was also reflected in the writing style. Bella Mackie was really trying too hard, as far as I am concerned, and once again, sometimes less is more.

Let's hope our February read is somewhat better than How To Kill Your Family, because I am not ready to have three bad mystery months in a row, I just can't do it. I need something to keep me glued to the pages, something like Truly Devious, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder or They Never Learn. Pray for me and Vitt, in February.

That's all for now, I'll see you soon with another review!

 This free site is ad-supported. Learn more
​