My third book of the summer is one that has been on the shelf since the January sales. ‘How To Kill Your Family’ by Bella Mackie has been everywhere (including my book shelf), so I appreciate I am very late to the party, which is why it had to be on my summer possibility pile.
However, now I have read it, I have had to take some time to process what I think about it. I cannot decide if I liked it or not, or if it was a book that was just a slow burn for me – and the more I read it the more I became invested in it. I almost felt like I needed to immediately speak to others who may have read it and find out if they enjoyed it or not, and try and get my thoughts organised.
I liked the idea of the book, but I do not think I liked Grace – I should have felt empathy for her, but I just found her a bit irritating, not as far-removed from the ‘distant’ family she was attempting to ‘deal’ with. But then, as I finished it, I wondered if in fact that was what I was supposed to think of Grace as the reader – because, no spoilers – the conclusion was clever. In fact, I thought the final quarter of the book was excellent and the twist (if that is what you can call it) was brilliant. In fact, once I approached the final quarter, I could not put the book down and I thought, well, actually perhaps I do like this book.
I understand that this is not a very helpful blog post – and I cannot give any spoilers – but I think this might just be the kind of book which will be a little bit marmite, and needs a bit of a debrief once it has been read. So, the big question is: have you read ‘How To Kill Your Family’? And what did you think? Because I still do not think I totally know what I think about it…