Anthony Wistern is wealthy beyond imagination. Fragrant wife, gaggle of photogenic children, French chateau, Cotswold manor, plethora of mistresses, penchant for cutting moral corners, tick tick tick tick tick tick.
Unfortunately for him, he’s also dead. Suddenly poised to inherit his fortune, each member of the family falls under suspicion.
And that’s when the lying starts…
I had painfully high expectations after “How to Kill Your Family” - and Bella did not disappoint me. Bella’s writing is the epitome of the phrase “morbidly hilarious” - this book is dark, bloody, tragic - but awkwardly, uncomfortably funny.
Married couple Olivia and Anthony act as our main narrators alongside a mysterious “sleuth” - offering a jarring, eerie vibe as hear from our murder victim before anyone else. Anthony offered a strangely calm, clear, matter-of-fact storytelling that made the subject matter almost laughable with the casual nature of how he describes the events leading to his own brutal, bloody murder combined with a unique take on ideas about the bureaucracy of the great beyond. I didn’t expect the afterlife to feature in anything from Mackie, but it just worked and somehow still felt so rooted in reality.
Then with Olivia’s prim and proper voice and our mysterious nameless character, there’s such a variety of different, distinct but strong voices - jumping between them seamlessly, with pacy chapters that kept the nervous energy building towards something dramatic, lulling us into mundane slowness at times before setting off again. Our sleuth offers some discourse on the public interest in murder and death, as well as some interesting commentary on interns detectives. All three characters and trying to figure out the same mystery from very different places - who killed Anthony and why?
Each character was undeniably complicated - I dislike them, their privilege and entitlement but I was obsessed with them, how their opulence and splendour was overtaken with darkness and despair and we see them start to crack.
An high-energy, irreverently funny, dry and dark tragicomedy about murder in high society.
Married couple Olivia and Anthony act as our main narrators alongside a mysterious “sleuth” - offering a jarring, eerie vibe as hear from our murder victim before anyone else. Anthony offered a strangely calm, clear, matter-of-fact storytelling that made the subject matter almost laughable with the casual nature of how he describes the events leading to his own brutal, bloody murder combined with a unique take on ideas about the bureaucracy of the great beyond. I didn’t expect the afterlife to feature in anything from Mackie, but it just worked and somehow still felt so rooted in reality.
Then with Olivia’s prim and proper voice and our mysterious nameless character, there’s such a variety of different, distinct but strong voices - jumping between them seamlessly, with pacy chapters that kept the nervous energy building towards something dramatic, lulling us into mundane slowness at times before setting off again. Our sleuth offers some discourse on the public interest in murder and death, as well as some interesting commentary on interns detectives. All three characters and trying to figure out the same mystery from very different places - who killed Anthony and why?
Each character was undeniably complicated - I dislike them, their privilege and entitlement but I was obsessed with them, how their opulence and splendour was overtaken with darkness and despair and we see them start to crack.
An high-energy, irreverently funny, dry and dark tragicomedy about murder in high society.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
- I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for an honest review.
- This title contains sensitive subjects including murder, drugs and alcohol.
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