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Bella Mackie

How to Kill Your Family: THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Hardcover – 22 July 2021

by Bella Mackie (Author)

9,446 ratings

#9 this week

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THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘I loved this book’ RICHARD OSMAN

‘An antiheroine able to best villainous male protagonists such as Patrick Bateman any day’ OBSERVER

‘Chilling, but also laugh-out-loud funny. Another corker’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

They say you can’t choose your family. But you can kill them.

Meet Grace Bernard.
Daughter, sister, serial killer…
Grace has lost everything.
And she will stop at nothing to get revenge.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-

‘I’ve struggled to recover my reading mojo since lockdown. This turned out to be the thing that sparked it back to life… Funny, sharp, dark and twisted, Grace is a character I found myself rooting for even as she committed the most vile misdeeds’ JOJO MOYES

‘Funny and furious and strangely uplifting. Grace is a bitter and beguiling anti-hero with a keen eye for social analysis – even in her most grisly deeds, you never stop rooting for her’ PANDORA SYKES

‘Deliciously addictive…brilliantly executed’ i PAPER

‘Addictive… Grace Bernard is one of the most intriguing and bewitching protagonists I've read in years’ EMMA GANNON

‘A funny, compulsive read about family dysfunction and the media’s obsession with murder’ SUNDAY TIMES STYLE

‘You’ll be gripped… Grace’s emotional detachment throughout will give you chills’ Rated 5 stars by COSMOPOLITAN
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Hilarious and dark’ ELLE

‘Ironic twists and caustic commentary on everything from liberal guilt to the consumerist con that is “selfcare” sharpen this debut novel’ OBSERVER

‘Brilliantly tongue-in-cheek stuff from the Vogue columnist’ IRISH INDEPENDENT

‘Witty, waspish satire of a murderer with no regrets’ GRAZIA

‘Original, funny, unique and such a refreshing read’ PRIMA

‘A deliciously dark debut novel’ RED

‘One very entertaining read’ WOMAN’S WAY

How To Kill Your Family was number 1 in the Sunday Times paperback chart on 26/04/2022

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

The Borough Press
Publication date

22 July 2021
Dimensions

15.9 x 3.3 x 22.7 cm
ISBN-10

0008365911
ISBN-13

978-0008365912
See all details

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From the Publisher

Product description

Review

‘Funny and furious and strangely uplifting. Grace is a bitter and beguiling anti-hero with a keen eye for social analysis – even in her most grisly deeds, you never stop rooting for her’ PANDORA SYKES

‘I loved this book’ RICHARD OSMAN

‘I’ve struggled to recover my reading mojo since lockdown. This turned out to be the thing that sparked it back to life… Funny, sharp, dark and twisted, Grace is a character I found myself rooting for even as she committed the most vile misdeeds’ JOJO MOYES

‘Addictive… one of the most intriguing and bewitching protagonists I've read in years’ EMMA GANNON

‘A funny, compulsive read about family dysfuction and the media’s obsession with murder’ SUNDAY TIMES STYLE

‘You’ll be gripped… Grace’s emotional detachment throughout will give you chills’ Rated 5 stars by COSMOPOLITAN
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Hilarious and dark’ ELLE

‘Ironic twists and caustic commentary on everything from liberal guilt to the consumerist con that is “selfcare” sharpen this debut novel’ OBSERVER

‘Brilliantly tongue-in-cheek stuff from the Vogue columnist’ IRISH INDEPENDENT

‘Original, funny, unique and such a refreshing read’ PRIMA

‘A deliciously dark debut novel’ RED

‘This smart revenge comedy is told through the eyes of the Villanelle-esque anti-hero Grace Bernard… Chilling, but also laugh-out-loud funny. Another corker of a debut’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘Deliciously addictive… brilliantly executed’ i PAPER

‘Witty, waspish satire of a murderer with no regrets’ GRAZIA

‘Darkly hilarious’ IRISH TIMES MAGAZINE

‘Deliciously dark and twisted’ You magazine, MAIL ON SUNDAY

‘Bella Mackie’s debut novel is by turns pitch-dark and laugh-out-loud funny, with an outrageous final twist’ DAILY MAIL

‘hilarious… skilfully plotted’ Adele Parks The Sun

Book Description

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ The Borough Press (22 July 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0008365911
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0008365912
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.9 x 3.3 x 22.7 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 3,632 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 683 in Humorous Fiction
- 1,096 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 2,103 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
9,446 ratings

About the author

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Bella Mackie

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Thanks for visiting my page. I am a former journalist who previously worked for The Guardian and Vice News. I write a twice monthly Vogue Column. My first book, Jog On, was a memoir about mental health and running. It was a number two best seller (just underneath Michelle Obama, which is a hallowed spot). Since then I’ve written an accompanying journal to encourage others to try exercise more for their minds than their bodies.

My first foray into fiction was with my book “How To Kill Your Family,” which came out in July 2021 and also ended up in the number two bestseller spot. I’m currently writing a new novel which will hopefully be out in 2023.

I live in London and spend a lot of time wrangling my large stupid dog. If the book isn’t out in 2023 then he will be why.

Customer reviews

5 star		50%
4 star		30%
3 star		14%
2 star		4%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

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Sophie Louise Arbuckle

Spoilers!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 July 2021

Verified Purchase

It started out pretty well but then went downhill. Its quite slow paced for my reading taste, I also found the main character quite dislikeable, though reading the reviews I think I'm the odd one out here haha! The twist at the end was so disappointing! To have such a strong female character be thwarted by a man is so typical and I did find it quite annoying.

100 people found this helpful

Helpful

C Knight

Revenge served cold

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 July 2021

Verified Purchase

We’ve all had those moments when we’d quite happily throttle our nearest and dearest, right? But they’re moments, brief passings of fury that dissipate as quickly as they arrive. But not for Grace. She’s hell bent on wiping out her parts of her family. She plans, she infiltrates before carrying out her dastardly plan. And her plans are extreme but executed perfectly.

The way Mackie splits the story between Grace’s incarceration and how she proceeds to eliminate those members of her family is entertaining. Then dropped in sporadically are snippets of Grace’s childhood and teen years – these are heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time as Grace goes through more in her formative years than most do in their first 30! I really took to Grace despite her intentions. She’s a focused young woman and is determined to complete her mission. She’s thorough in her planning and execution, her dedication to her own cause admirable.

I thoroughly enjoyed Mackie’s debut novel. Her writing flows smoothly between past and present. This isn’t a regular crime novel; it’s kind of a cross genre kind of book. If you’ve read Jog On, you’ll be in for a surprise; this (unsurprisingly) is nothing like Mackie’s first foray as a published author. Mackie inserts a bucket load of dark humour into the story of real vengeance. I really hope this is the start of some dark and twisted novels from Mackie’s keyboard.

57 people found this helpful

Helpful

Books_by_your_bedside

Just screaming out for a TV adaptation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 August 2021

Verified Purchase

Oooooh what a juicy, juicy book. It’s so dark and twisted and bloody, but funny and entertaining and joyful and, bizarrely, uplifting,

Whilst I don’t necessarily approve of mass familicide, the main character of Grace Bernard is such an empowering woman and I feel like I absolutely love her - which seems completely wrong.

Bella has a way of crossing between the past and present, and even characters, smoothly and I never once got confused as to where in her story we were. The amount of description used is just right; it gives you enough to cling to when reading the story, but it doesn’t overwhelm it and become one of these “why use one word when you can use five” kind of books.

And that twist at the end!!! I’m not saying anything, but boy did I not see it coming, any of it, which to me is the sign of a good thriller/murder mystery writer.

This is Bella’s debut fiction book and I truly hope it’s the start of a long line of others. It’s so unusual to anything I’ve read before and I can really see Bella being a real tour de force for the future.

Also, it’s just screaming out for a TV adaptation starring Jodie Comer.

42 people found this helpful

Helpful

Very long chapters and a lot of waffle but the ending made up for it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2022

Verified Purchase

I wanted to love this book, as I do love a female psychopath and Grace was certainly that. She was cold, cynical and normally everything I love in a character. So why was it I found her so bothersome and quite frankly she got on my nerves. I constantly thought “oh get over yourself” and move on. She was as unlikeable to me as the family members she was plotting to kill were to her.

I don’t think the chapter lengths helped, each one felt like a book in itself and I found myself plotting the author’s demise and how I could have done it in one sentence so why did she need 60 pages. It would have been beaten to death by hardback but as I had a kindle copy she had a lucky escape. I found it ironic that it says in the book “Life is so short, and we spend so much of it talking to terrible people about the minutiae of their nothing lives”. Change talking to, to reading about and it was very apt.

So why did I keep on reading you may ask. Well as much as I hated Grace and the chapter lengths I wanted to know what got her caught and would she get out of prison. Also did she kill the one person she had saved for last and the murder that would mean the most. It was even more ironic that of all the murders she had committed she was in prison for one she swears she is innocent for.

The majority of this book was 3 stars and I struggled each day to pick it up and that sucked a lot of joy out of my reading experience. However I’m glad I stuck with it as the ending was the full five stars and it was not only very clever it made me look back and see things completely differently. So my personal opinion is to definitively read it, but go in expecting this as one to slowly savour rather than a fast paced thriller which is the norm.

28 people found this helpful

Helpful

misscraigie

Slow. And no burn.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 February 2022

Verified Purchase

I wanted to love this. After all the hype around its release I was excited to read it.
Others have said it and I'd agree that it's unnecessary, lengthy descriptions add nothing to the book and that the main character is so unlikeable. She really is! I kept trying to be on her side and put myself in her shoes but after every b****y comment she made about people's appearances or lifestyles I just hated her more and more. It felt like the whole book was just one long (and unasked for) opinion on every other character. Constant digs about how people walk, talk, dress, look, work....honestly, just filler.
No real substance to anything and I felt no connection or empathy for any character. It took me about 4 months to read the whole thing and it felt like a massive chore. Someone should check on the author, felt like a lot of projected feeling and thoughts!
Give it a miss.

25 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Just Awful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 October 2021

Verified Purchase

Was really looking forward to this but have never been so bored reading a book in my life and i read a lot of books. Pages and pages of unnecessary information and droning on with no sense of excitement or humour. Slight twist on the very last page but by then i couldn't have cared less.

26 people found this helpful

Helpful

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