This was so much fun to read- an entertaining darkly funny thriller with plenty of twists.
I love Bella Mackie's writing style and brutal commentary. Personally, I would have preferred the book to be a little shorter as there were a couple of occasions I felt my interest lagging, but overall I did enjoy it!

This was one book that tested my patience a lot and I would have given it up if it wasn't an ARC. I was really excited to read the book initially because the author's previous work-How to Kill Your Family was popular on Bookstagram and I had missed reading it.

Anthony Wistern gets killed by being impaled on a spike on his grand 60th birthday party, organized by his wife, Olivia. It turns out that Anthony was highly successful and owned an investment company but there were quite a few people who hated him enough to want him dead, including his own children and wife. Few chapters are narrated by Anthony himself, where he is in a limbo-like state waiting for the memory of his last few hours on earth to return to him and find out how he was killed. Without this knowledge he cannot move on to the next phase of death.

The book was quite enjoyable in the beginning, but I really hated all the characters including the one called Slueth, who desperately wants to believe that Anthony was murdered and wants to investigate this crime. I didn't really get why this character's name wasn't revealed until the very end, especially when there was no angle to it. In brief, I did not enjoy reading this book and it put me into a book slump for the entire month of August.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the advanced copy of the book.

Murder mystery that fizzles out

Beginning with a not-so-secret reveal that the recently deceased is a narrator in this kaleidoscopic novel, the action and the detective story that follows are narrated by the deceased, his wife and an internet sleuth, revealing the true story behind his sudden death at his own sixtieth birthday party. Could it be his avaricious children? His put-upon wife? or could it be something to do with his business in financial investments? Or just some ridiculous accident?

As one of the narrators is the deceased, we get a glimpse at the purgatory he ends up in, trying to figure out his last moments, the last thirty minutes of his life erased in the bureaucracy of the afterlife, before he can move on to the next place. What that place is... you'll have to discover for yourself and let me know if you think the preceding thousands of words have set you up for the denouement.

Three stars.

Anthony Wistern has everything most people ever dream of, that is until his 60th birthday when he unexpectedly dies. With his wife and children set to inherit his fortune secrets and lies creep out from every corner. With the topic of murder arising in steps “The Sleuth” a YouTube amateur investigator looking to solve the crime, can she beat the police to the murderer and will she live to tell the tale.

The waiting room for the afterlife gave me quite a laugh, it made me think slightly of Beetlejuice. I really hope that’s not where we are headed though. Having Anthony’s point of view where he is watching his family brought a fun little twist to the regular murder mystery.

I enjoyed the story but I think it is aimed at the teen to young adult reader and as such I would recommend to this age group. I would say it is an easy to read dark comedy, murder mystery with a twist.

What A Way To Go starts with a bang! Rich businessman, Anthony Wistern, is found dead at his opulent 60th birthday party and finds himself in death's waiting room where he is tasked with remembering the details of his death before he can move on. He can watch the movements of his cold-hearted wife and four gold-digging children, which is an eye-opener for him.

The story is told from three points of view - Anthony, his wife Olivia and 'the Sleuth', a local woman turned detective.

This book is twisty and hilariously dark in places. It was a refreshing change from a typical murder mystery and I enjoyed the element of the narration from the after life.

My thanks to NetGalley and the Publishers for sending me this ARC in return for an honest review.

This book reminded me of two things in particular. First the game chinese whispers where a comment is whispered to one person who passes it on to another and so on. By the time it has been passed on to a number of people it has inevitably been mis heard and the meaning changed.
Second the film Betelguice. The waiting room for the afterlife and Anthony's reaction to it is laughable - in a good way for readers.
I enjoyed the book and the way it was told from different viewpoints. I especially liked Anthony's view of all the happenings.
I think Anthony was disappointed not to die up to his living extectations. Livvy got all she deserved and Will finally showed the family just how much use he could be to them all.

I think I enjoyed this book more than I enjoyed How to Kill Your Family, and that says a lot considering I brought that into work with me every day for a week and read it under a desk.
The way the story was told was unique and really helped make each character three dimensional and believable. It was full of Bella Mackie's usual dark, chatty, satirical humour and I think this is the perfect book to gift people. The twists were easy to follow but engaging, it isn't your typical murder mystery, and it wrapped up really nicely.

I really enjoyed this book. It was fast paced and easy to read. It’s told from multiple points of view, which I love. Bella’s writing is great, it’s engaging and humorous and really makes it hard to put the book down.

The characters were well written and the relationships between them were believable. There were a lot of twists but the story was easy to keep up with.

I love the idea of a processing centre after you die, this was one of my favourite things in the book! I will definitely be picking up more books by this author.

Gifted

I had to make use of the sunshine we’re having to get a shot of this conversely dark book!
Having recently read and enjoyed Bella Mackie’s How To Kill Your Family, I was delighted to receive an early copy of #WhatAWayToGo.

Told from three different perspectives, this is a murder mystery with a twist; the victim is also trying to solve the case, from the afterlife.
Anthony Wistern; wealthy, influential, hugely successful, and let’s face it, an utter horror of a human being, is celebrating his 60th birthday at a lavish party organised by his wife (also terrible), and kids (equally awful) when the man himself is found dead under bizarre circumstances. Anthony later finds himself in a sort of limbo; he can’t move on to the “next stage” until he remembers accurately how he died. He can watch his loved ones for clues, which he diligently does but soon finds that actually plenty of people had very good reasons to want him dead.

Meanwhile, a local armchair detective, nicknamed (by herself) “the sleuth”, sets out to solve the case while also drastically increasing her follower count on tik tok. She quickly discovers True Crime is much trickier when you’re actually living it and not just listening to a podcast.

Lastly, we also hear from Anthony’s long-suffering wife Olivia, regularly dismissed by her ungrateful children, cheated on by an uncaring husband, and now the prime suspect in his death. She’s no Angel, but is she a murderer?

I enjoyed this book so much, more than How To Kill Your Family, I think. I love a good Murder mystery and this one kept me guessing. Pretty much all of the characters are unlikeable, but that actually works well here; it feels almost tongue in cheek sometimes. Plenty of dark humour and you’re given permission not to empathise with anyone in the book and just enjoy the journey.

This is a fun, clever, and dark read, that felt utterly unique to me. I think it’ll be perfect for snuggling up with over Autumn.

With many thanks to @harpercollinsire for my copy, all opinions are my own, as always. Available to buy now!

First of all thank you for approving my request!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! The authors writing style had me hooked throughout this book.

I didn't want it to end, a book I really couldn't put down.

I really enjoyed this. Despite meaning to I've never read the author before and loved her writing style which is chatty, sharp, astute, satirical and funny. For example, I particularly related to Olivia's hatred of being told to "cheer up" by men. The storyline was also fun and original with the victim stuck in a death processing centre until he can figure out who killed him.

As Anthony is ridiculously rich and "morally agnostic" there's no shortage of suspects including his wife, Olivia, who admits "I'd wished my husband dead many times...even thought about ways it might happen." Or any one of his four children described by Olivia in age order as "demanding, strange, intimidating and annoying." I liked the Super Sleuth too but her addition was slightly unnecessary and jarring alongside Anthony also trying to work out 'whodunnit'. So an entertaining read which left me wanting to read 'How to Kill Your Family' even more than ever.

A fun read Quite innovative to a three way who dunnit Firstly from the victim in the next world,interspersed with family relevations and an entirely absurd third party sleuth. Enjoyable yet gripping at the same time

I’m not sure if it’s a thriller, a mystery, or a dark comedy, but whatever it is, Bella Mackie’s new novel is fizzing with fun and originality.
The best-selling author of How to Kill Your Family has delivered a delightfully witty story about a wealthy and terrifyingly dysfunctional family.
Anthony Wistern is ridiculously rich, his wife and children don’t really care about him or each other, so when he dies in a highly suspicious fashion, everyone falls under suspicion.
Trapped as a dead man seeking answers we’re presented with the story of his death from the point of view of several different characters as we try to piece together what really happened and how Anthony died.
The story cracks along at a good pace, it’s witty, clever, and laugh out loud funny.
With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an ARC.

I really enjoyed this book, the different perspectives to move along the story were great and the plot was original and fun. My only slight disappointment, and what led to me giving four stars instead of five, was that the ending felt quite abrupt. Other than this, I was hooked the whole way!

This kept me guessing the whole time, and I didn't predict the plot twist until the end. It took a little time to get into multiple POVs, however, each character would always hint at something that no one else knew and every character was always scheming against each other so it made you want to keep reading.

The book starts with Anthony's death right away, and we're left to wonder if it was an accident or murder. We follow his wife and four children and see the effect of his death on their lives and reputation as part of London's high society when secrets start to be revealed. The Wistern family does not seem like a family you would want to be a part of, as they are all obsessed with money and appearances. There's also a girl, who goes by ''the sleuth,'' who is obsessed with the idea that Anthony was murdered and starts to create an online following sharing her conspiracies.

Overall, I did enjoy this and I don't read many murder mysteries/ thrillers so it was a nice change!

I loved everything about Bella Mackie’s first fiction book, How to Kill Your Family. The dark humour, the wit, suspense and the unlikeable main character that made you secretly love her, this book was a delight.

I was so excited to get my hands on an arc of her latest release, What a Way to Go.

Anthony Wistern is a wealthy man. Beautiful wife, photogenic children, materialist possessions, societal prince and a tendency to cut moral corners. So when he dies at his 60th birthday party, his family are poised to inherit his fortune.

And that when they all fall under suspicion, and the lying begins…

I loved the premise of this story, and Bella Mackie is so good at writing terrible characters with no moral compass. But, where I believe she excelled in her previous story by somehow making a serial killer likeable, I just could not get on board with any of the characters in this story.

They were all just awful from beginning to end, so when the mystery was finally solved, it didn’t particularly care or root for any of the characters.

But, I appreciated the storytelling, the three different narrators in Anthony, his wife Olivia and an anonymous social media sleuth determined to uncover the truth. There was excellent dark humour throughout and the story kept me engaged until the end, with lots of reveals and twists throughout.

An enjoyable murder mystery full of unlikeable wealthy idiots!

This was a thriller that may definitely be more to others' tastes than mine. The story of a dead CEO who can't move into the afterlife till he figures out how he died + a callous and possibly humorous family left behind make for an interesting cast, but I unfortunately didn't find them very interesting as they just seemed to blend into each other, and a lot of their personalities other than wanting a cut of the inheritance weren't quite apparent.
This book is probably largely satirical with the way everyone's main focus in this seems to be reputation; it gets repetitive after a short while and I didn't enjoy this factor of the book as a reader. There were elements of a plot and it really sped up at the 50% mark but I just couldn't get properly into it. If you love watching celebrity reality shows, this may be something you'll enjoy.

A very British romp through the awful life - and for some, afterlife - of the ghastly Wistern family and assorted hangers-on.

After the mother of all 60th birthday parties, the body of Anthony Wistern is found impaled on a lake ornament in the grounds of his Cotswold mansion. His death is more a cause for avaricious speculation, rather than sadness on the part of his acquisitive family but a local true crime enthusiast smells a rat and is determined to find the truth.

This is very much a tongue-in-cheek laugh at the expense of a certain type of posho as well as the modern obsession with true crime podcasts. Serious crime fiction it is not but it is definitely lighthearted fun of the type reminiscent of some of the post war black and white films such as Kind Hearts and Coronets.

With thanks to NetGalley, HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction and Bella Mackie for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A dark humour in this book . Mostly about an extremely wealthy family with multiple properties, this book is mostly centred an their house in Gloucestershire. Anthony, the father turns 60 and an enormous party is held at their home, only problem is that deep into the celebrations, he is found dead in their lake. There are quite a few around who have a reason for wanting him dead . This book is told from different points of view, his own, that of his wife, but also by the Sleuth who starts podcast/tic-tok feeds looking into his dodgy dealings and the possibility that he had been murdered.
The characterizations are well done and I liked the descriptions of places, including the holding area after death. The plot is quite intricate and quite drawn out , my one criticism of the book. In my opinion it could benefit from being a little shorter and more punchy . But this is a fairly entertaining read on the whole..
Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC in exchnage for an honest review

✨REVIEW TIME!✨

What a Way to Go by Bella Mackie
⭐️⭐️⭐️
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After wealthy CEO Anthony Wistern dies under mysterious circumstances, each of his remaining family members fall under suspicion.

But who murdered Anthony Wistern? And why?
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Full of scandal and with mixed-media storytelling, I had a lot of fun reading this ARC. It was thrilling, engaging and had a blast trying to figure out this whodunnit murder mystery.

There were twists and red herrings left right and centre but I felt like I’d achieved something after guessing the outcome correctly.

Thank you to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to review this arc