Book Review: How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie

‘How To Kill Your Family’ was a smash-hit debut by Bella Mackie that was released in the summer of 2021. It is a popular thriller and is both a New York Times bestseller, and a Sunday Times bestseller.

The story follows Grace Bernard, who is serving a sixteen-year sentence in a women’s prison in Limehouse, for a crime she didn’t commit. Not that she doesn’t have the stomach for murder. No, prior to her arrest, she had wiped out six of her immediate relatives: her paternal grandparents, her cousin, her uncle, her half-sister, and her half-sister’s mother. All in a bid to claim the family fortune, despite never being claimed as a part of the Artemis family.

The irony of being arrested for a murder she didn’t commit wasn’t lost on Grace, but after a year of incarceration she is adamant that her new, expensive lawyer will uncover the fact she is innocent. Until then, she bides her time by writing her life story.

There was a lot to like about this book, but it really didn’t end up being my kind of thing. Even as Grace, an incredibly unreliable narrator poured her heart out about the lengths she went to in order to annihilate her relatives, due to her tragic life story, it was really, really hard to feel sorry for her. She wasn’t a narrator who commanded sympathy at all, but she certainly was a bitter victim of circumstances. I just didn’t connect with her.

I found myself eager to get through the book, more to find out whether she was acquitted after fourteen months behind bars, than to find out how she killed her family, exacted her revenge and reaped the rewards. I really didn’t care. I cared more about Andrew, the estranged cousin than the cynical, bitter Grace. She lacked perspective, and it irked me to no end.

Mackie’s command of character voice was strong, and although some of the ways Grace discusses trauma highlighted her bleak and spiteful envy of the life she deserved and had me howling. I truly think her attitude was best summed up by the iconic quote “some people have fathers who beat them, some have fathers who wear Crocs. We all have our crosses to bear.”

There were many moments, such as Mackie’s choices about when to and when not to offer detailed description were incredibly clever. Offering small nods to details about a character, such as the fact Andrew looks like a hippie, or that Lara is mixed-raced, and that Janine’s face is filled with Botox and filler, said a lot about the character and their potential insecurities etc. Meanwhile, other descriptions are vague, and yet incapsulate the vibes of the characters even more, such as the guy Grace encountered that “definitely voted to leave the EU”. The blunt, dismissive, savagery with which she describes these passer-bys as insignificant is very poignant and reflective of that same self-centred-ness she criticised her relatives of having. She was, in that sense, an incredibly ironic and interesting character to analyse.

Which frustrated me, because hearing Grace ramble on about her dislike of her relatives, and how she wondered how she would be had she grown up within that circle was rather repetitive and had me just wanting to hurry along to the next murder. The chapters felt long and the pacing was perhaps a bit too big on the anticipation for what happened next. I found myself trudging through the waffle of Grace’s take on capitalism, gentrification and nepotism and although I agreed with her takes on it, the repetition was not something I particularly enjoyed.

This book really wasn’t my thing, but I can see why it was so popular, with baited breath, I wanted to know how she dispatched her father, the one who rejected her and her mother, and was so cruel and dismissive. I felt no sympathy for Simon Artemis, none. And by the time the plot twist came around, I found myself backtracking baffled. I am toeing the line between the plot twist coming out of nowhere and lacking some much-needed foreshadowing and wondering if I skimmed over important allusions to the twist in my eagerness to find out how each member of the family was killed. Regardless, I was very much like “oh, okay,” when it came to the twist, so take that as you will.

Ultimately, this book wasn’t something I found myself desperate to read, instead it was more like I was desperate to finish, as I didn’t want to DNF it, as I argued I wasn’t giving it enough of a chance. It wasn’t my thing, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be yours! Who knows, maybe you’ve just stumbled upon your next favourite book?