After reading

Essay questions

1. Which of the murders did you find the most interesting? Why?
The murder of Andrew Artemis was the one murder that I find the most interesting. It
also caught me off guard the most (after Kathleen’s beheading) and almost made me
cry. Anyway, the reason why I find this murder the most interesting is very simple,
Grace didn’t want to kill him. At the start of the chapter in which Andrew gets
murdered she ‘says’ and I quote: ‘I didn’t much want to kill Andrew, Artemis. It had
to be done, of course, I knew that and held firm, but I wasn’t prepared for one of them
to be, well, nice’. She literally says that Andrew was nice. So, the only reason why
Grace killed him was because he was an Artemis. And even though, he didn’t have a
relationship, let alone a good relationship, with his family, he could always crawl back
to them if he had to. That was reason enough for Grace to justify killing him. Besides
the reason why Grace did it, how she did it was also very interesting. She literally
volunteers to work at the place she knows Andrew works. And then works there for
quite some time before she meets Andrew and is able to become friends with him.
Along with that, she doesn’t kill him instantly, no, she waits days before she kills him.
Kudos for her determination. The way how Andrew died really breaks my heart. The
murder wasn’t like a quick bullet to the head and dead. No, it was long and probably
painful. After he and Grace do some kind of frog drug, she pushes him into the water.
Unable to move, since he was way too drunk (thanks to Grace), he watches as the
person, who he thought was his friend (and who I think he fell in love with), murders
him. His death was gruesome, however, I do think there were worse deaths in this
book than his. But none of the other murders were as interesting as this one.

2. The book ends with a letter from Grace’s brother. Did you find this a satisfying
conclusion?
The short answer to this question is ‘no’. I HATE this conclusion so much, with
emphasis on the word ‘hate’. I don’t think I can put into words how much I hate this
ending. Her entire teenage years were Grace thinking about killing her father and
making him suffer. Grace hated her father more than anything in this world, and in the
end, she doesn’t even get the satisfaction of killing him herself. Instead, we get
introduced to some dude named ‘Harry’, who is somehow related to Grace. And
somewhere in the middle of his letter we find out he is the one responsible for the
death of Simon Artemis, Grace and Harry’s father. Believe me, when I say I wanted
Grace to find and kill Harry at that moment, I’m not joking. I don’t think that Harry
should’ve even gotten the chance to kill Simon. Anyway, Harry had a good life. He
had a loving family, money, and an education. What more does he need? He did not
deserve the chance to ‘kill’ Simon, and with that, I mean that nothing in his life was so
bad that killing someone would be somehow justifiable. When Harry went to Simon’s
house, Simon recognized him and treated him like his son. Simon literally sees Harry
as his son, yet he couldn’t treat Grace as his daughter. The amount of sexism in this
book is sickening. Why does he treat Harry like his son? Why can’t he do the same for
Grace? He could have saved his entire family if he wasn’t such a jerk. Anyhow, at the
 end of the letter Harry threatens to expose Grace if she ever tries to get in contact with
him or her aunt, who Grace didn’t kill. He can do that because he has evidence from
Kelly, Grace’s roommate from jail, who had sent photos from Grace’s book to him.
Honestly, if I were Grace, I would’ve taken a photo of that mail he sent and sent him a
mail saying that if he were ever to expose me, I would expose him. Also, Harry, who
literally grew up in the upper middle class, keeps all the money from his dad and then
dares to say that money isn’t everything to someone who grew up with nothing. At the
beginning of the letter, Harry seemed like a good guy, but no, he is just the same as
Simon. He refuses to fully acknowledge privilege and greediness, he waves away his
own faux pas but acknowledges that's what they are, though he still makes them. And
as his father, he also rejects Grace. I seriously hope that Grace didn’t listen to Harry
and that she killed him. It would also explain the publication of the book. So, no. This
conclusion was a lot of things, but it wasn’t satisfying. If anything, it wanted me to
throw the book out of the window.

3. Which roles did class and wealth play in the book?

Class and wealth both play important roles in this book. Without class and wealth, this
book wouldn’t exist. This whole thing started from the moment that Simon thought
that he had so much money, he could do anything. He went to some kind of club, sent
a drink over to Mary (Grace’s mother), got Mary pregnant, and then ran away,
ignoring his fatherly duties. And his parents did nothing to stop it. They justified his
behavior and said that all the women (because there has been more than one woman
who Simon got pregnant) were just doing it for their money and that the babies
weren’t really Simon’s. His parents could do that because they were wealthy and they
were higher class. The most logical questions that follow are, ‘What if he wasn’t so
wealthy? What if his parents weren’t higher class?’. I honestly think that everything
would’ve been so much different if they had the amount of money that the average
human has, and if they were just middle class. Simon would’ve probably not gotten so
many people pregnant. He would have been a normal father. But since his daughter,
Bryony, was born before Grace, there is a really high possibility that Grace would not
have existed. Meaning that his family and Simon would still be alive and well.
Another way that you can see that wealth is so important in this book, is with the death
of Andrew Artemis. Andrew didn’t have contact with his family, yet Grace found the
fact that he could always go back if he needed money or something enough to kill him.
So, yes. Being wealthy and higher class can make people a real menace.