Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - How to Kill Your Family

Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie

11 reviews

esv_'s review

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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abi_sarah's review

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dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Took me a while to get into it, but I really loved this book!

Bella Mackie’s writing was so witty and painfully honest. The familial annoyances that Grace felt throughout were so relatable - she just had an extreme response to them! 😅

I felt like the first deaths happened a little to early, so there was a then a bit of a lull for me where I lost interest a bit. It soon picked ip again though and held my interest until the very end. The last 35-30% really had me gripped - there were just so many new twists and turns that I just wanted to keep reading!

The only thing I would stay that stops it from being 5 stars, is that sometimes I found Grace’s reasoning behind her murders a little shallow? Maybe it was just me, but a bit of believability escaped there for me.

Excellent writing from Bella Mackie, highly entertaining! Great story-telling too! Loved the plot twists, so imaginative!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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theelliad's review against another edition

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3.5

How to Kill Your Family is the account of serial murders told from the perspective of the killer as she serves jail time for a murder she didn’t commit.

The narrative voice of this novel is hilarious and sarcastic and truly kept me engaged, alongside this the dual timeline of the story is handled well and it was structurally enjoyable and followable. That said, I was disappointed by the ending, the twist was not the best but I thought fitted the story well, it was rather the transformation in Grace (the protagonist) in the final chapters. The self sufficient, powerful and somewhat narcissistic personality she has established falls victim to the writers need for a conclusion becoming submissive, easily forgiving and a bit boring as the final events of her life are recounted; it was this, more so than the plot twist, which didn’t feel right to me. However, that said I did enjoy this book enough to speed through it in a matter of days and so I cannot judge it too harshly!

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robin_reads's review against another edition

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dark funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated

3.0

The first third was really good, the next part dragged on forever and the last bit was pretty interesting and a plot twist I didn't quite expect.
Pretty sure the ending is left this vague because there will be a sequel? Who knows.

The audiobook narrator for Grace's part made me furious at times. They would take a breath or swallow in the middle of the sentence, take odd breaks and so on. It was really annoying.

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sammyelliott_'s review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

when I realised this was the same premise as Kind Hearts and Coronets (or A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, if you're more theatre than movie) I thought I knew how the book would end. Turns out, I did not. Honeslty, I'm a little annoyed at the ending, but I get why it ended that way.

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meeklovestoread's review

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dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.25

The amount of times this book put me to sleep should be criminal. I'm not the type where I have to like the characters to like a book, but my goodness I found Grace to be so intolerable and always constantly overly pessimistic and judgemental of literally everyone. As someone that seems to set on murdering these privileged peoole she seems just as pretentious as they are. The twist at the end still left some unanswered as to what happens to Grace.

And the introduction of Harry felt kinda rushed. I don't know. It just felt pretty random. Him being Simon's son and having him be the one to kill Simon. I don't know how I feel about that considering throughout most of the story we were in Grace's POV.

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