How to Kill Your Family

How to Kill Your Family is the first novel by Bella Mackie, a journalist who has written for several publications and who contributes regularly to Vogue. Her memoir, Jog On: How Running Saved My Life, was a Sunday Times bestseller in 2018. In How to Kill Your Family, Grace Bernard details her revenge against her father, Simon Artemis, a billionaire who abandoned her mother when she became pregnant with Grace. As Grace plans and carries out each murder, her narrative explores The Unsatisfying Nature of Revenge and the link between Pride and Miscalculation, often due to The Illusion of Control over one’s life and choices. Grace also shares many similarities with the prideful murderer-protagonists of Edgar Allan Poe.

This guide refers to The Borough Press 2022 paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain references to mental health conditions, including depression and disordered eating, and substance misuse.

Plot Summary

Grace Bernard, the protagonist, introduces herself from Limehouse prison, where she’s served almost 14 months of an 18-year sentence for murdering her friend’s fiancée. She claims to be innocent of this crime, but she admits to committing six other murders. Grace is 28 and proud of the murders she’s carried out. She recounts how she murdered her paternal grandparents. Though she had planned to avenge her mother since she was 13, she still felt unprepared at 24. She introduces her grandparents, Jeremy and Kathleen Artemis, as terrible people and explains how they persuaded their son, Simon, to abandon Grace’s mother, Marie, when he got Marie pregnant. Noting that she is a better person than either of them, Grace describes how she tailed the couple, following them home along a winding, dangerous road. A few days later, she waited around a bend on that road until she saw their car; then she accelerated toward them, forcing them off the road. Kathleen died immediately, and Grace set the car on fire, but only after she told Jeremy who she is and her plans for his family.

Grace believes her cellmate, Kelly, is an idiot. Kelly is in prison for blackmail, and not for the first time. Grace sees herself as supremely self-controlled, especially in comparison to Kelly and Marie. Marie emigrated from France to be a model, became part of the 1990s London nightclub scene, and fell for Simon’s sleazy charm. Marie dreamed, constantly, that he would accept Grace, but as Grace got older, even she knew this was a fantasy. When Grace was 13, Marie died of cancer, and Marie’s friend took Grace in; later, Grace moved in with the Latimers, the family of her best friend, Jimmy.

Andrew Artemis, Simon’s nephew, was her next victim. He cut ties with his family years before and volunteered at a marsh preservation center. Once Grace learned that Andrew used a frog toxin to treat his depression, she knew how to make his death look accidental. She volunteered at the center and convinced Andrew to let her try the toxin. The night they took it, Grace got him very drunk and drowned him in the marsh. When she left the center, she felt like someone was watching her, but she blamed it on the drug.

Grace makes a wooden spoon at a class in prison and carves her victims’ initials into it, confident no one will look closely. When Kelly admires the spoon, Grace gives it to her. One day, Kelly appears with a cell phone, though Grace never asks how she got it. Writing her story gives Grace a sense of pride, especially because it reminds her that she sought to remedy injustice. After moving in with the Latimers at age 14, Grace spent all her free time with Jimmy, but then he went to college, and she began to focus on her revenge plans. She got a job at Sassy Girl, one of Simon’s companies, and moved out. When Jimmy returned for her farewell dinner, Grace had sex with him, another way to endear herself to him. Grace got a job at Sassy Girl headquarters but quickly moved on because it got her no closer to Simon.

Nine months after Andrew’s murder, Grace began planning to kill his father, Lee. Tailing Lee to several sex parties, she learned that he liked to be choked. She researched auto-asphyxiation, knot-tying, and a sex club where they’d have more privacy, then invited him to meet. It took just four minutes to kill him, and Grace left him there, hanging by the neck with his pants down. When Grace went to his funeral, Lee’s wife, Lara, told everyone how heartless he was and how she enabled him by staying. Impressed, Grace decided not to kill Lara. Grace’s lawyer is appealing her conviction, confident she’ll be released. The person she’s been convicted of murdering is Caroline Morton, Jimmy’s fiancée, and while Grace hated the woman, she didn’t kill her. Caro fell off her balcony when she was drunk, and Grace was the only other person there. Grace once told Jimmy about her concerns, but he thought she was just jealous because he’d moved on. Then, when Caro fell, Jimmy immediately blamed Grace.

Janine Artemis, Simon’s wife, was next on Grace’s hit list. She lived in a smart house in Monaco, so Grace had only to gain access to the house’s hub to assume control of the lights, electricity, and appliances. She connected with a young hacker online by telling him she wanted to mess with her horrible stepmother, and he told her what to do. Grace convinced a member of Janine’s household staff to smuggle in a device and hook it up to the hub, and this was how the hacker accessed the flat’s devices. He and Grace watch online as Janine enters the sauna; then, at Grace’s request, the hacker locks her in and turns up the heat until it kills her. Simon’s social-media-obsessed daughter, Bryony, was next, and Grace planned to exploit Bryony’s peach allergy. Grace sent the influencer some beauty products containing peach essence, unsure if Bryony would even use them, and she also learned of a big soiree at which Bryony was expected. She got a job with the catering company but soon learned that Bryony died alone, in her room. Grace felt less in control with this death, as she didn’t know how Bryony died or get to watch it happen.

Grace’s lawyer obtains a video from a neighbor showing Caro’s balcony, which clearly reveals that Grace didn’t touch her. Her appeal is successful, and Jimmy reaches out immediately to apologize. Grace writes about the period after Bryony’s death, how Simon’s friends told the press he’d become paranoid and reclusive, convinced she was murdered. Grace became complacent then, enjoying his fear and suspicion. Her anger wilted, especially when she began to understand how “deliberately small” she’d made her life by focusing solely on revenge. Then, a few days after her arrest, she learned Simon was missing at sea after an accident. She cried for days. Now, however, she is determined to leave prison whole and unbroken, confident she can pursue the Artemis fortune with her lawyer’s help.

Chapter 16 introduces a different typeface and a new narrator, Harry, who emails Grace and claims to be her half-brother. Harry learned Simon was his biological father when he was 23, after the death of the man who raised him. His mother, he says, was weak, as he imagines Grace’s mother was. When Harry’s family began to experience financial troubles, he reached out to Simon, who, he says, was happy to have a son. After a DNA test, Simon gave Harry a lump sum but expected a relationship in return. At first, Harry enjoyed the respect others afforded him at Simon’s side, but Simon soon became demanding and critical. On the day Harry decided to sever ties with his biological father, Simon learned of his parents’ deaths. Drunk, he told Harry about Grace, and Harry immediately began to follow her to learn more about her. He recounts some half-dozen moments in which he was very near her: including on the steps at St. Paul’s and when she killed Andrew and Lee. Once Harry understood what Grace was doing, he realized that she would eventually kill Simon and relieve him of his father’s odious attention. However, after Bryony’s death, Harry was confused by Grace’s delay and feared she wouldn’t be able to get close enough to Simon to kill him. After her arrest, Harry knew he’d have to do it himself. When Simon offered Harry an inheritance to accompany him to St Tropez, Harry couldn’t turn it down, but Simon became verbally abusive there. Drunk, Simon berated Harry into joining him on the speedboat, but when he insulted Harry’s mother, Harry smashed a wine bottle over his head. Simon went into the water, and Harry let him drown. Harry told everyone Simon accidentally fell overboard and never resurfaced. Now, Harry says, Grace needs to move on. As insurance, Harry hired a private investigator to find out who Grace’s cellmate was. He met with Kelly and gave her the phone, and she texted him pictures of Grace’s journal. He paid Kelly off and now anticipates that she’ll leave Grace alone.

The novel’s postscript contains only a short note from Kelly to Grace. Kelly requests that Grace call her to discuss “things,” noting that she still has the spoon Grace made and promising to keep it “safe.” She warns Grace not to ignore her because she knows where Grace lives.