How To Kill Your Family By Bella Mackie & My Sister the Serial Killer By Oyinkan Braithwaite 2 Books Collection Set

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ONE CRITICISM: The author included some political venom and BDSM mentions (in different parts of the book!) that could have been easily deleted without compromising the storyline. How to Kill Your Family also takes the reader on a psychological journey of sorts. The novel’s protagonist, 28-year-old Grace Bernard, sets off on a mission to eliminate all members of her family with an end-goal of seeking revenge on her father, millionaire businessman and stereotypical playboy who abandoned her and her mother as a baby. Casale added: “Every few hours I suddenly remember that Harriet is my editor and Viking is my publisher and it’s not just an amazing daydream. Harriet’s pitch captured everything I want this novel to be; from the start, she and the whole wonderful Viking team have embraced me and the women in the book with all the solidarity that lies at the heart of the story. I can’t imagine better partners in bringing the book to readers and hopefully becoming one more voice in the fight to change the endemic nature of male violence against women and girls.

It started off with a good idea. A girl who wants revenge on her family and kills them all but ends up being put in jail for a murder she did not commit. The idea was there. The execution was not. The plague of these past years - if we exclude the pandemic, obviously - is the publishing industry’s obsession with creating a good-looking cover. Because you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but everybody does that ‘cause the cover is always a big deal! Grow up, this is childish, hypocritical and snobbish. I would maybe understand her anger if she was 12. Not 26. And once again we have the trope of the girl that’s so “unique” and so “different” from everyone else by just being as basic, stereotypically millennial, snobbish and arrogant as any other with just a touch of deranged and vindictive psycho.Grace is clearly intelligent for example— she comes up with ingenious ways to kill her relatives without leaving any trail. Yet she completely misreads the character of her cell-mate in prison. She is scathing about wealthy people with their expensive tastes in clothing, wine, and houses yet after her mother’s death she was raised by a high-income couple who taught her to enjoy the finer things in life. So Grace has benefited from a similar privileged life that she criticises other people for enjoying.

Not only that, but the plot felt kind of weak. There were so many weak points in the murders she committed. At one point I wondered if there had been witnesses, and it turns out THERE WAS. Okay, this is going under a spoiler tag, but yeah, apparently her secret half brother had been following her all along, and she never noticed because she's an idiot. She thinks she's being so secretive, and yet carries out at least three of the murders with witnesses. And then she does the incredibly stupid thing of writing out her confession in prison where her cellmate can read it (AND DOES). It's just so stupid. Those who hated the ending are forgetting how ridiculously silly Grace was for not thinking of these things. Overall, this compelling tale of calculated revenge was fast-paced, witty, and riveting, from beginning to end.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. And her killing her cousin, who is nice and rejects the wealth just because she thinks that because he's a man he will give in eventually and become like them anyway... Well, it felt very forced and not really a great reason to kill anyone.