Book Review :: Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
ISBN: 0143795651
Series: Ernest Cunningham #1
Also in this series: Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect
Published by Penguin Random House Australia
on 29 March 2022
Genres: Adult, Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 384
Goodreads

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate.

I'm Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I'd killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it's a little more complicated than that.

Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let's get started.

Last updated on 21 January 2024

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What is Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone about?

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson is a murder-mystery book, with a twist.

In the wild world of the Cunninghams, death is like an additional family member, often making an appearance, whether known or unknown. And the body count is getting higher.

When the Cunnginhams organise a family reunion on the mountain at a ski resort in Australia, Ernest (or Ern, or Ernie) makes the trip, wondering what to expect in what is usually a tumultuous meetup at the best of times. It’s going to be an odd one, as Ern’s brother has been released from jail … and Ern was the one who helped put him away.

“Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.”

To make matters worse, there’s now a body that’s been found on the mountain, no one knows who it is, the police show up, there is an inquiry … and the world knows that the Cunninghams have blood on their hands from years gone by. But, of course, there’s always more to the story and more than meets the eye.

Who is the mystery dead body on the mountain? How are they connected to the Cunnginhams? What is Ern’s brother hiding in his truck? The questions are many and the answers are drip fed to us as readers as time goes by.

My thoughts on Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Considering I don’t usually read books like this, or at least not very often, I really enjoyed Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson. I actually discovered it because I saw that the second book in the series, Everyone on this Train is a Suspecthad recently come out, but of course, in order to read that one I needed to read te first one. And hence my reading of it.

I don’t usually like this almost quirky style of writing, where there first-person narrator talks to you as a reader and provides snippets of the past and present, and drip-feeds you information like Ern does in this book. But for some reason, it really worked, and I found myself just itching to read it and find out what happens next.

It’s broken up into different sections, with each section being semi-related to someone in the family who has killed someone – the brother, the step-sister, the wife, the father, the mother, the sister-in-law, the uncle, the step-father, the aunt, and Ern himself – and while the story continues a mostly chronological order, we learn more about the murders each family members has committed as we go. And also how that might be connected to the mystery body on the mountain.

The other fun thing about the book was that our narrator, Ern, is a writer himself and helps mystery authors write their murder books. This means he does things throughout the book such as tell you the rules of a mystery novel or make comments like this:

“Call me a reliable narrator. Everything I tell you will be the truth, or, at least, the truth as I knew it to be at the time that I thought I knew it.”

This was a story where, because you didn’t know all the details, you only knew what the narrator was willing to give you at any one time, it was an interesting mix of me guessing some things or making educated guesses, and then not knowing a bunch of other things. And I really liked that.

Overall, I gave Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone 4 stars, and I’m looking forward to reading the second one soon!

What about you? Have you read this book? What did you think?