How to Kill Your Family (Bella Mackie) - It could have been a 5 star read - could have.

 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Joint review with @shelfishannie

We enjoyed reading this book - a young woman with a revenge kill list, deliciously creative ways of bumping people off, single minded focus, remorseless and successful in carrying out her plans to eliminate those she thinks wronged her and her mother. What's not to like?

Grace is a young woman who has planned and waited all her life to take revenge on her father's side of the family who have wronged her and her mother. She has spent her teenage and young adult years with a single minded focus to carry out her evil plans to bump off people who are technically her family but never believed she is. She is creative and meticulous in her approach, well planned and focused on her goal. She ticks the names off her list and is patient not to rush things along. Except that the best laid plans will always have someone who walks in and upsets the schedule you are on. And this happens with Grace too - ironically she gets arrested and jailed for a murder she actually had no hand in. By the time she can clear her name and get out to complete her plans with the crowning glory, things have gone out of hand and her opportunity gone depriving her of a sense of completion. 

The book is well written and well-paced - there is no repetition and though the central premise remains the same, it does not get boring or predictable. Each act of hers is unique and interesting. There is a liberal sprinkling of dark and dry humour and we found myself repeatedly smiling at the expressions and turns of phrase. Grace does not get plagued by unnecessary moral dilemmas and is dispensing justice with vigilante vigour. She is also a feminist after my own heart and we agree with many of her observations about men and women and how they lead their lives. All in all, it could have been a 4 star read for me, except the end.

For most of the narrative, we see the world through Grace's eyes, in which everything and everyone is either black or white - there are no greys. She doesn't come across as a psychopath or a serial murderer on a destructive trail, but you can occasionally tell that she is unhinged and operating with a moral code convenient to herself and her world view. Despite this, we felt for this unfortunate clever girl and were rooting for her to achieve her goals. That is probably why the ending seemed even more disjointed. Suddenly Grace's voice disappears and we hear from another character, one who seems to have been hovering at the periphery and who has now sent everything for a toss and taken over the entire stage.

Thus the end was disappointing for us - Grace who does all the planning and hard work is left with nothing and is it happens in real life, a man walks away with everything she had hoped to get. Maybe it was deliberate on the part of the author to bring this real life slice into this beautifully constructed fiction, maybe it was the need for a twist that made her end it like this. Whatever it was, Grace deserved better.