Mmmm. I usually don’t like to jump on bandwagons. This book was promoted and pushed SO vigorously, it had SO much marketing spend invested in it that it was popping up everywhere — on bestseller lists, in chats with friends who are also keen novel-readers and among members of my own Book Club. Everything in me didn’t want to succumb, but then, out of sheer curiosity, mixed with a certain amount of deep envy, I did.

And it was good, an enjoyable enough read, but did it really warrant the massive amount of buzz that was generated around it? Was it really deserving of Sunday Times No 1 Bestseller status? I’m not sure.

The title is great and the plot is strong: Grace Bernard, the anti-hero main character, sets about killing each member of her family in a modern-day revenge comedy. But it is highly derivative — I was reminded of the British crime classic, Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which Alex Guinness plays the distant relative of the Duke D’Ascoyne and plots to inherit the title by killing the eight other family members who stand in his way in the line of succession. Even the structure of the book, narrated in a first-person confessional tone by the main character from prison, is the same as the film.

Perhaps I am being unfair. It’s funny and sharp with excellently dark twists; Grace is a wonderfully cynical, deeply unlikeable main character;  plus it’s well researched. But ultimately I was disappointed. The prose is not particularly new or fresh, and it contains way too many adverbs (the road to hell is paved with these, as Stephen King says).

Extract:
My story is not for Kelly (my cell mate). I doubt she’d have the capacity to understand what motivated me to do as I did. My story is just that — mine — though I know readers would lap it up if ever I published it. Not that I ever could.