Bella Mackie

Yes, this is a book about a rich family, something it seems to be criticised for? Yet the whole point of the book is that it's satirical; we're basically laughing at the ridiculousness of these rich people, who even in death, they feel as though they're above everyone else.
I found it to be witty and comical, making me chuckle regularly with some truly memorable sentences. I liked the perspective of the afterlife, watching the family through the monitors and dealing with the rude staff. A show more fun read! show less

I'm thinking of adding a tag to my collections to warn other readers that in this novel they will find a pathetic narrator who blames everyone for her own failings, and either lashes out or cries in a corner - #WhinyBitch, or in this case, Grace Bernard.

I could not find one thing to like about Grace. At first I thought she was delusional, like Emma Woodhouse, and that Bella Mackie is actually a clever writer for sneaking into the first person narration how vain, snobby, hypocritical and show more generally insecure Grace is. But no. I think the reader is actually supposed to pity Grace's backstory and then cheer her on as a strong woman while she recaps her murderous rampage from her prison cell. And what is that tragic history, perfectly described in a three star review on Amazon (if the author can crib from someone else's story, then I can quote from a review): 'Fleabag with talent contest tearjerker sob story'? She's the daughter of a single mother, who died, like a fallen woman in a Victorian morality novel, when Grace was thirteen. That's it. But instead of being grateful that her flake of a mother loved her and worked hard to raise her alone, and that her mother's friend and the parents of a schoolfriend later took her in and saved her from 'the system', Grace blames her 'hard' life on her absent father. Simon Artemis, who is so ridiculously villainised for being wealthy that I'm surprised he wasn't given a moustache to twirl or run over urchins in his Bentley, was a married man who had a brief fling with Grace's mother and then dumped her when she said she pregnant. Hardly charming, but this happened in the 1990s not the 1940s. Grace decides the only fair retribution for how the Artemis family treated her mother - or for how they didn't give her any money, let's be honest - is to kill the lot of them, one by one. As you do.

So Grace is a psychopath on a killing spree, but she also lacks the maniacal energy and dark wit of Villanelle in Killing Eve, despite the comparisons. She bitches about everyone and everything, from the too rich to the badly dressed plebs she works with, in a weak attempt at observational humour that didn't make me laugh once. 'I am not like these other prisoners,' Grace tells herself. 'I am better.' Because she can make a 'full time job' (at her biological father's fashion company) pay for designer gear, despite dolling off every other week to murder someone else? Or because she's the daughter of a 'victim' and 'eliminating a toxic group of people from society' - or killing people because they have money that you want - makes her an empowered woman?

Life is so short, and we spend so much of it talking to terrible people about the minutiae of their nothing lives.

Did I really just spend an afternoon ploughing through 350 pages of an egomaniacal character trying to make her small life sound like cutting social commentary? The Sunday Times bestseller list strikes again! Grace has precisely no charm or believable personality traits - well, she likes long-distance running, but I've already covered that she's a psychopath - and is not sympathetic in the least. She's jealous of more attractive and confident women, keeps her friend/adoptive brother on a leash ('Jimmy has probably always been in love with me') and can't seem to understand that sperm does not equal fatherhood. The mantra running through my head while I battled on was 'GET OVER YOURSELF.'

In a bid to cleanse my imagination of Grace the #whiny bitch and the rest of the cliched characters, I'm going to watch Kind Hearts and Coronets, which is based on the novel from which Bella Mackie cribbed her plot. show less

I might not want anti-heroine Grâce as a friend, but I did enjoy her judgemental, snippy comments about everything from the Bored Rich to Manicured Influencers, as she does away with the family she never knew.

I could have done with shorter chapters, they always make for a speedier read, but it was fun to enter vicariously into the different worlds of each of her victims. And the twist was great.

Best for:
People who don’t mind reading about horrible people, and who like a bit of schadenfreude.

In a nutshell:
Anthony - a very rich finance dude - dies at his 60th birthday gala. Was he murdered? Did he take his own life? Is something else going on?

Worth quoting:
“He’d always thought I was an idiot. It’s a mistake men often make, thinking their wives are stupid when they’re actually just full of rage.”

“Who are these people who walk through the world with such little interest show more in what’s really going on?”

Why I chose it:
I enjoyed her previous book “How to Kill Your Family.”

Review:
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Really no one in this book is super-likeable. Even the character we are probably meant to relate to most - ‘the sleuth’ trying to solve the possible murder of Anthony - is somewhat annoying and kinda unremarkable. But I still enjoyed it once I realized I wasn’t actually rooting for anyone. To use a sports analogy: you know when both the teams playing each other are teams you don’t like and you’re like ugh, why can’t they both lose? Well, that’s sort of how this book goes - everyone loses!

The minor spoiler here is that while Anthony dies at the start of the book, we still get his perspective because he goes to purgatory to try to remember how he died. In this version of reality, people who die go to a holding center where they need to recall their death before they move on to whatever comes next. And while there, they can actually watch their family members. Wild, eh? So while we only get point of view chapters from three characters, we still can see what others are doing if they are family members.

Anthony’s wife Olivia is another vile character. Anthony and Olivia actually quite deserve each other - they’re both genuinely horrible people who delight in the misery of those who don’t have their wealth or status, playing games with peoples lives. Gross, right? They feel like caricatures but for some reason, for me at least, it totally works. Anthony and Olivia also have four kids, ranging in age from 17-28, and there are various partners and other side characters we follow along as well to try to sort out why Anthony died.

I know the world is an absolute dumpster fire right now, and sometimes to offset that I look for a book that really explores how complex the world is, and how people can be so good. But sometimes I also just want to lean into it and hate on the super wealthy. This book scratches that itch, show less