Amazon.co.uk:Customer reviews: How To Kill Your Family: THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Top positive review

Revenge served cold

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 July 2021

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.

58 people found this helpful

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Sophie Louise Arbuckle

Spoilers!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 July 2021

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.

102 people found this helpful

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Sophie Louise Arbuckle

Spoilers!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 July 2021

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102 people found this helpful

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C Knight

Revenge served cold

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 July 2021

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58 people found this helpful

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Books_by_your_bedside

Just screaming out for a TV adaptation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 August 2021

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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

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

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2022

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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

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misscraigie

Slow. And no burn.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 February 2022

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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

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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.

27 people found this helpful

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B. Bampton

I don't like it much

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 January 2022

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It's an up date Kind Hearts and Coronets, right down to her writing a journal in prison about her crimes. The point is that in KH&Cs the villain expects to die and is leaving a note for posterity. In this book her expectations of being executed are non-existent and she expects to get off. AND she shares a cell!
It isn't funny, the pace is slow and the novel drags. I forced myself to read the first 7 chapters but I found it increasingly seedy and sordid so I skipped to the end. I must admit the postscript is wonderful.
The plot is very sketchy, the details don't make sense, the timeline is all over the place and the murders are lacking in realism. Take the first murder. Was she relying on meeting a wealthy man on the plane and borrowing his Hummer? Why are Kathleen and Jeremy portrayed as a couple in their 70s when they must be 90?
Other questions: What IS her motive? I thought her objective was to rid the world of unpleasant relatives so why does she choose Andrew for her second victim? Why didn't her mother demand a DNA test and force her father to pay maintenance? Why are her French relatives 20 years behind the times? Why is she so nasty? Why is she such a snob? Why does she use Jimmy's parents so badly? Why does she feel so entitled? Etcetera.

19 people found this helpful

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P.B

Watch Kind Hearts and Coronets instead.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 December 2021

Verified Purchase

The author attempted a modern take on Kind Hearts and Coronets, and failed miserably. No wit nor charm. The main character is utterly unlikable, and the 'twist' could be seen coming a mile off

17 people found this helpful

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A sophisticated serial killer thriller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 August 2021

Verified Purchase

This is written in a similar fashion as C. J. Skuse's Sweetpea trilogy except the characters motive for revenge is more clean-cut, her modus operandi original, and the author's writing more literary. This is what I'd term a sophisticated serial killer thriller and I hope it's the start of a new subgenre in crime fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading more from this author.

16 people found this helpful

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daisy dachshund

Don't bother!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 February 2022

Verified Purchase

Gave up half way through, what a load of tosh. Are the comments made by other authors 'advertising' this actually true, if they are they must be getting paid well.

12 people found this helpful

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