Harriet Bourton, publisher, pre-empted world rights in a major deal for T he Best Way to Bury Your Husband and one other untitled novel from Kristina Pérez at Zeno Agency. The Best Way to Bury Your Husband will be published as a lead title in February 2024. The novel follows Grace Bernard on a quest to get revenge against her father and her family - Grace is, frankly, so immediately unlikable and snobbish that I almost didn’t keep going past the first chapter. I’m glad I did though, because while Grace is, yes, unlikable, she’s also hilarious and smart and surprisingly talented at committing serious crimes. I talked in my review of The Penelopiad about why I think needing to immediately like the characters I’m reading about limits the reading I do, and How To Kill Your Family is another amazing example of how good it can be to push past that. Almost every character is infuriating, but that didn’t stop me from speeding through it and loving it. If now I can't even trust a nice pink cover with a girl and a shovel, I don't know what I can trust anymore. She plans with extreme precision and executes these plans with ease and no regrets. It is only on reflection that I realise just how vile her deeds were. While I was absorbed in her world, the violence and immorality of her acts was camouflaged by her planning, precision and rationalisation. There's no two ways about it, Grace, the protagonist of this story isn't a nice person. And yet, I still found myself really liking her as a character. She is brutally honest, incredibly vengeful and darkly comical and we as the reader get front row seats to her innermost thoughts and feelings told through her life story written while serving time in prison for a crime she, ironically, didn't actually commit. I thought the premise was fantastic and I really enjoyed reading as Grace executed her cunning plans as well as her musings on all manner of subjects including wealth, class and even influencers. The narrative is generally really sharp and clever although at times Grace's story is interrupted by the present day so at times I could understand why people found this to be a bit of a ramble. I didn't actually mind this as it felt more realistic for me personally. After all, whose thoughts are ever organised?

What. A. Book. Huge thank you to @boroughpress and @netgalley for my copy! How to Kill Your Family is hilarious, dark, gripping - it is at some points completely batshit and it’s one of the best things I’ve read this year. While in prison for a murder she did not commit, she begins to keep a journal in which she documents the six murders she did commit. Each death is described in detail, Grace relishing in her ability to plan and execute killings so flawlessly that she was never suspected.HOW TO KILL YOUR FAMILY takes the proverbial saying "Don't get mad, get even" to exciting new levels. Grace Bernard is a thoroughly unlikeable person. Single-minded to the point of obsession about her plan to exact revenge, she freely exploits other people’s vulnerabilities to get what she needs. .

SOME ADVICE: If reading a book entitled HOW TO KILL YOUR FAMILY deeply troubles you, close your eyes, hold your nose, snag this book.....and READ ON.When Grace discovers her bio dad, a millionaire, rejected her and her dying mother, she decides to enact her revenge by killing the entire family. Yet, in a strange twist of fate, she is convicted and sent to prison for the one murder she DIDN’T commit. The story follows Grace’s plan to kill her family, for crimes committed against both her mother and herself. I didn’t find the reasoning for the vendetta totally compelling, but as the book progressed, I felt it actually didn’t matter. It was really fun following her process - doing the research, plotting the death and then carrying it out. It’s not always straightforward (it would be a dull story if it was) but it’s quite the wild ride.

I also really loved the little insights into Grace’s societal views. They’re often added to the ends of paragraphs, and they’re caustic, witty, judgemental and completely deadpan. How To Kill Your Family is a dark, sometimes brutal, delight of a novel that had me giggling one moment and cringing the next. This is not a cozy story, but there is PLENTY of dark humor and snark, which I adore. Grace is not an angel, and this may sound terrible, but I really liked her and rooted for her the whole time. Addictive… Grace Bernard is one of the most intriguing and bewitching protagonists I've read in years’ EMMA GANNONYes, this book is truly in a league of its own. It's chilling and disturbing; yet, also LOL humorous. Grow up, this is childish, hypocritical and snobbish. I would maybe understand her anger if she was 12. Not 26. And once again we have the trope of the girl that’s so “unique” and so “different” from everyone else by just being as basic, stereotypically millennial, snobbish and arrogant as any other with just a touch of deranged and vindictive psycho. It started off with a good idea. A girl who wants revenge on her family and kills them all but ends up being put in jail for a murder she did not commit. The idea was there. The execution was not. Writing from prison, Grace tells the reader: “After all, almost nobody else in the world can possibly understand how someone, by the tender age of 28, can have calmly killed six members of her family. And then happily got on with the rest of her life, never to regret a thing.” Perhaps this assertion in the prologue is true, but having spent eighteen chapters immersed in Grace’s head, I came pretty close to understanding just how she did it. Take the plot of the Ealing film classic Kind Hearts of Coronets. Make your central character an anti-hero assassin in the vein of Villanelle from Killing Eve. Add in a lot of snarky comments about twenty-first century life and you get the essence of How to Kill Your Family.

The novel has also seen pre-empts from dtv in Germany and Saida de Emergencia in Portugal and selling at auction to Pamela Dorman at Pamela Dorman Books/Viking in the US. French rights (Julliard) and Serbian rights (Vulkan) have also been sold, while conversations with other foreign publishers are ongoing. When I think about what I actually did, I feel somewhat sad that nobody will ever know about the complex operation that I undertook. Getting away with it is highly preferable, of course, but perhaps when I’m long gone, someone will open an old safe and find this confession. The public would reel. After all, almost nobody else in the world can possibly understand how someone, by the tender age of 28, can have calmly killed six members of her family. And then happily got on with the rest of her life, never to regret a thing. I read books, I follow world affairs, I have opinions on more than just shoes and golf clubs. I am better than these people, that’s not in doubt. But they look happy despite their ignorance. Perhaps because of it. What is there to worry about? None of these idiots are thinking about climate change, they’re wondering what to wear on the yacht tomorrow. The idea is promising, Grace is a likeable character and the first chapters really hook you, even if you don't understand everything. But from there on is just a bunch of facts of her life after another, casual things that happened to her, the only two people still in her life and that horrible cellmate she unfortunately has. Amidst the chaos of the calculated revenge plot are flashes of humour and Grace’s hilarious but true observations about the mundanity and bizarreness of life. It is a surprisingly uplifting story in places and while I never felt that her victims deserved their ultimate fates, Grace’s certainty and confidence was almost able to convince me of the necessity of her deeds.

Non-fiction

How To Kill Your Family is the ideal how-to guide. Within a week of finishing this book, I had successfully killed my family. And gotten away with it. There’s no real drama. No point at which she is almost caught in the act which would have come as a welcome intermission.