Published By: Borough Press
Pages: 368
Date Published: 22/07/2021
I have killed several people (some brutally, others calmly) and yet I currently languish in jail for a murder I did not commit.
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.
When Grace Bernard discovers her absentee millionaire father has rejected her dying mother’s pleas for help, she vows revenge, and sets about to kill every member of his family. Readers have a front row seat as Grace picks off the family one by one – and the result is as and gruesome as it is entertaining in this wickedly dark romp about class, family, love… and murder.
But then Grace is imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit.
*****
Oooooh what a juicy, juicy book. It’s so dark and twisted and bloody, but funny and entertaining and joyful and, bizarrely, uplifting,
Whilst I don’t necessarily approve of mass familicide, the main character of Grace Bernard is such an empowering woman and I feel like I absolutely love her – which seems completely wrong.
Bella has a way of crossing between the past and present, and even characters, smoothly and I never once got confused as to where in her story we were. The amount of description used is just right; it gives you enough to cling to when reading the story, but it doesn’t overwhelm it and become one of these “why use one word when you can use five” kind of books.
And that twist at the end!!! I’m not saying anything, but boy did I not see it coming, any of it, which to me is the sign of a good thriller/murder mystery writer.
This is Bella’s debut fiction book and I truly hope it’s the start of a long line of others. It’s so unusual to anything I’ve read before and I can really see Bella being a real tour de force for the future.
Also, it’s just screaming out for a TV adaptation starring Jodie Comer.
Books By Your Bedside 