Decode your taste →

Books like How to Kill Your Family

How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie reads as dark-humor, cynical. These 12 books share its genome — matched by how they actually read, not just their shelf label.

What How to Kill Your Family is like to read

A gleefully nasty first-person confession from a narrator picking off her estranged father's family with cold wit and class-war venom. The frame — she's now jailed for the one murder she didn't commit — turns a serial-kill romp into a snarky puzzle box. Best for: readers who want a mean, funny anti-heroine and eat-the-rich satire dressed as a thriller.

My Sister, the Serial Killer cover
My Sister, the Serial Killer
Oyinkan Braithwaite · 2018
A sharp, deadpan hand-grenade of a novel: short chapters, dry wit, and a morally queasy loyalty test between sisters that reads faster than its darkness suggests.
mildly eeriecomplete storydeep cut
Dexter cover
Dexter
Jeffry P. Lindsay · 2013
A forensic analyst leads a fractured double life as a vigilante killer, narrated through Lindsay's signature ironic detachment and dark wit.
deep cut
The Kind Worth Killing cover
The Kind Worth Killing
Peter Swanson · 2015
A chance airport confession spirals into a coolly plotted crime built on shifting allegiances and secrets held by every party.
mildly eeriecomplete storydeep cut
Hatchet cover
Hatchet
Gary Paulsen · 2004
A stripped-down survival story told in short, urgent sentences and fragments that mirror Brian's mind under pressure — as much about a boy learning to see the world as it is about staying alive.
creepy, not goryYA
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie cover
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark · 1961
A wry, compressed portrait of a charismatic teacher whose grip on her chosen girls curdles across the years — comic on the surface, chilling underneath, told with prolepsis that lets you see the damage coming.
complete storydeep cut
The girl in 6E cover
The girl in 6E
A. R. Torre · 2014
Shares the vspare thread
My Brother Sam Is Dead cover
My Brother Sam Is Dead
James Lincoln Collier · 1974
A Revolutionary-War story told from a boy's vantage as his family is torn between a rebel brother and Tory neighbors — the tragedy the title promises hangs over every page, buildin
YAcomplete storydeep cut
The war that Saved my Life cover
The war that Saved my Life
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley · 2015
A first-person middle-grade account of a disabled girl escaping an abusive mother into wartime evacuation, where hard-won trust and small triumphs (a pony, reading) carry real emotional weight.
mildly eerieyounger readersdeep cut
The night diary cover
The night diary
Veera Hiranandani · 2018
An epistolary middle-grade/YA account of Partition told through a shy twelve-year-old's diary letters to her dead mother — intimate, sorrowful, and quietly devastating in its child's-eye view of historical catastrophe.
YAcomplete storydeep cut
Inside Out & Back Again cover
Inside Out & Back Again
Thanhha Lai · 2011
Told in spare, diary-like verse from a ten-year-old's point of view, the book moves in small daily vignettes from wartime Saigon to Alabama — homesick, bewildered, and quietly funny in turns.
YAcomplete story
Conversations with Friends cover
Conversations with Friends
Sally Rooney · 2017
A cool, observant first-person drift through a Dublin affair and a fraying friendship — precise, witty, and quietly uncomfortable rather than plot-driven.
complete storydeep cut
We Are Not from Here cover
We Are Not from Here
Jenny Torres Sanchez · 2020
Shares the escape + vspare thread

About How to Kill Your Family — what the genome says

Is How to Kill Your Family a complete story or a cliffhanger?

It's a complete, standalone-satisfying story.

How scary is How to Kill Your Family?

Mildly eerie — tension without real scares.

Who is How to Kill Your Family for?

readers who want a mean, funny anti-heroine and eat-the-rich satire dressed as a thriller

Find your next read by its genome

Tell Novelome one book you love — get recommendations tuned to your taste, including the ones other sites never surface.

Start free →
More readalikes: Books like THE LET THEM THEORY · Books like EXTREME OWNERSHIP · Books like WINGS OF STARLIGHT · Books like DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK, EXPANDED EDITION · Books like I WILL TEACH YOU TO BE RICH, SECOND EDITION · Books like FAKE SKATING · Books like THE CREATIVE ACT · Books like IF ONLY I HAD TOLD HER