Set against the backdrop of unprecedented times, the story follows four women who find themselves in a unique predicament: dealing with deceased husbands and the challenge that come with it.

Casale's writing effortlessly blends dry humor with poignant moments, making for an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. The characters are brilliantly drawn, each with their own struggles and vulnerabilities, yet united by their resilience and determination to overcome their circumstances. As the plot unfolds, readers are drawn into a world where laughter and tears intermingle, and where female solidarity shines through even in the darkest of times.
Overall, "The Best Way to Bury Your Husband" is a must-read for anyone looking for a compelling story that will stay with them long after the final page. I highly recommend it to readers who appreciate dark humor, well-developed characters, and thought-provoking themes. Thank you to Penguin and Netgalley for providing me with the opportunity to read this gem of a book.

I want to start off saying Casale is a tremendous author; her writing keeps you engrossed and wanting more.

I automatically loved Sally, I just wanted everything to be okay for her. This is a darkly funny book with a heavy subject matter but it's so well done you forget about it.

We are slowly introduced to Ruby, Samira and her daughter's Leila and Maryam, and Janey and her daughter Ava and watch as their bonds of friendship grow through their unconventional meetings. Each lady is witty and clever and you watch as they slowly overcome years of being pushed down. Casale takes her inspiration for this novel from real life encounters she had with DV victims throughout the lockdown and she talks about this further in her author's note in the beginning and end of the book which is an important read.

It was strange being back to the beginning of lockdown when we could only go out for an hour at a time and the shelves were bare at the supermarkets but again Casale does this well, drawing from own experiences to help us relate.

I highly recommend this one

4.5⭐️

I loved this! It covers such an awful subject yet does so in a lighthearted and funny way. I enjoyed how it doesn’t condone or glorify female violence and although like the author says in the notes at the end, it’s a highly unlikely scenario but it’s also managed to feel believable? Although the ending was predictable I really enjoyed it.

I was initially excited about this book & at the start, this did entertain me. I feel as though it fell flat during the middle & didn’t really pick back up again. I found the book to be quite repetitive and towards the end I was skim reading & missing out paragraphs.

The premise of the book is very good, the execution wasn’t as good. Too repetitive & not a lot going on.

I'm a bit conflicted with this story. The author herself admits that the likelihood that, in the space of a few days, four women come across each other in the same circumstances that they join together not just to support each other in the darkest of times, but take it that bit further does take the edge off it a wee bit. I found the planning quite entertaining and it's an easy read. I wouldn't say there's much humour in the book. I'm not sure how much the exaggeration of the situation actually does to hammer home the appalling stats regarding violence perpetrated against women.

This book was definitely easy to read and very fast paced, the short chapters really meant the story moved along and kept me interested. That being said this one just felt a little done before for me, and I felt myself guessing what would happen next and just didn’t really gel with the story in the way I might have liked.

Overall this made for easy reading and I think fans of this genre etc will enjoy this one a lot. For me I think I would have just liked it to have more individuality

It sounds weird to say I thoroughly enjoyed a book which had such a harrowing subject matter, but I really did.

The Best Way to Bury Your Husband is set in the UK during the covid lockdown where people were only allowed to leave their houses once a day. A group of women somewhat serendipitously come together after dark after one way or another each of them ending up killing their husband.

The group decide to help eachother out and plot out a plan to get rid of the bodies and each get away with it.

This book is a great mix of black comedy and genuine touching moments, it features domestic abuse as one of its main plot lines and it’s done so well and realistically I thought that was great, as a lot of books get that wrong.

The very core of the book however is female friendship and how you’ll do anything for those you love, and I found it uplifting and hopeful by the end. A great read.

As the author says herself at the beginning of this story, this is a black comedy dealing with very real issues of domestic violence, only exacerbated my the covid-19 lockdown period of 2020. While at first I was a little put off by the shock factor of the violence portrayed at the start of the novel, I quickly came to realise that once you picked up on the razor sharp wit behind it - it was very cleverly done.

Plotwise, this was the epitome of I support women's rights but most of all I support women's wrongs". I loved the way this book looked at female companionship and intergenerational friendships and it also touched on how abuse can affect the relationships people have with their own families.

Although the book remains lighthearted and earnest in tone throughout, there is a serious note running through that cannot be ignored and I feel that I've gained a new perspective into the kinds of dangerous relationships that exist across the UK (and beyond of course!)

I don't think this is a genre or style of book I'll return to, but it was a well paced, enjoyable story nonetheless.

Having been in an abusive marriage for 10 years, I found the characters very relatable. From the image on the front I was expecting something a bit more lighthearted but this didn't stop my enjoyment of the book, there were a great mix between the humour and the seriousness of the topic.

It was a really enjoyable book, with great writing and character development. I'm looking forward to reading more by Alexia.

While the back history of the women in this story was an age old story of domestic abuse, it turned out to be a fun, heartwarming tale of new friends and teamwork. I enjoyed this story.

I was really looking forward to reading this but it wasn't quite as light hearted as I expected.

Set in lockdown where 4 women all suffer with domestic violence.

While it is written quite light heartedly it has a dark and not nice subject.

A good read

Set during lockdown, four women who all have to deal with domestic violence. Two big topics but this book was such an enjoyable read. The humour was dry and dark and it made me smile and even laugh out loud at times. The characters were all so well drawn and I felt for all of them and was cheering them on at the end. I’d love to see this as a film, as like the book it would be marvellous. Thank you to Penguin and Netgalley for letting me read this, I would happily recommend it.

I was expecting to love this but unfortunately it fell a bit flat for me perhaps I went in with very high expectations?

I loved using humour to approach this very unfortunate topic and loved the premise of the book however I felt that towards the middle of the book the pacing was slightly off and at the end eventually picked up leading me to believe that this book could definitely have been shorter and that would've made for a much more pleasant reading experience. Additionally, I didn't enjoy the lack of structure in the chapters, I wish each chapter at the beginning would've followed one story and the next a different story rather than a few consecutive chapters about character A and the next one about character B only to jump back character A's story in the following chapter.

Overall an enjoyable read but didn't dazzle me.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC.

I got a few worried glances from my husband whilst reading ‘The Best Way to Bury Your Husband’ by Alexia Casale! When Sally snaps in lockdown and ends up murdering her husband with her Granny’s prized skillet, she realises her problems are only just beginning.

Alexia Casale previously worked as a specialist human rights non-fiction editor – focusing on violence again women and girls. In her author’s notes she writes that – ‘on average a woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK… at the start of the Covid lockdown, the femicide rate doubled’. Whereas How to Bury Your Husband can come across as a bit of a black humour farce initially, there is a disturbing reality at its core, and it has a much darker undertone as its central message.

All of the female characters in the book are scarily easy to relate to – all trying to find a way out of their difficult situation, and in doing so, they then need to dispose of the bodies! There is a dark humour to the story which kept me gripped, and there is also a deadline looming as well as events unfolding which add tension and up the pace nicely – I found myself flying through the pages, wanting to find out if they would get away with their crimes.

There is also good character development in the group of women as they work out how to live again without the rules created for them by their controlling husbands and working together as a team to literally get away with murder. There is also a nice twist at the end which I did see coming but enjoyed nonetheless.

Overall I highly recommend How To Bury Your Husband, it’s an engaging read about an important topic. Thank you to NetGalley & Penguin UK General – Fig Tree, Viking & Hamish Hamilton for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sally suffers at the hands of Jim everytime he feels she has done something wrong. Because of this she has been distanced from her family and friends. During lockdown something snaps in her and when he tries to hurt her, she hits him with her Granny's skillet and he dies.
Samira has discovered that her husband is planning on sending her daughter to Iran, as soon as the lockdown is lifted, for an arranged marriage as he has discovered that she prefers girls and the shame will be too much for him. When she poisons his food, it was a reflexive action to that news.
Ruth's husband, whilst trying to hurt her, falls down the stairs and dies.
Janey's husband has changed since they had their baby, he is now abusive and intolerant. When he starts on her in the nursery, she grabs the first thing to hand and the result is his death.
By chance they all come together and plan how to bury their husbands and explain their disappearances.
Watch by local busybody, Sally has to face up to the challenge under her watchful gaze.
A difficult subject treated with black humour and sympathetically. Those if us who have been in those kind of relationships will appreciate this.

Superb dark comedy, I really enjoyed this book.

This book follows four women who accidentally murder their violent husbands and the attempts to cover up their crimes.I felt a little guilty for enjoying this so much. It’s a very emotive subject, but this book is amusing, lighthearted and focuses mainly on the friendship and camaraderie between the women.

A very tricky subject to handle as a comedy but Casale does it very well.

Sally met and married Jim at seventeen to get away from her dad and dysfunctional family, only to go from the frying pan into the fire.
Years of misery at the hands of Jim, and a life her mother lived was not what she had hoped for.
At the start of Covid and its lockdown rules and regulations, things are primed to get worse for Sally, until her existing problems are no more, but she has new ones to deal with.
Sally realises she is not alone in her situation, and finds herself the leader of a newly banded group of women, without intending to. Hence the start of Sally, Ruth, Samira and Janey, with the added help of Leila.
Four heads together has to be better than one, right?

It’s fair to say I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book considering the theme was of how to bury your husband and the domestic violence that was the start of how they all found themselves in this situation. It was a darkly funny book in places that had me laughing away.
I admire the author of the book for highlighting what is very most often a hidden behind doors situation, and her attempt to highlight the plight that too many women have to suffer and endure throughout their lives. There is a forenote at the beginning of the book, and more information at the end.
It is startlingly worrying how many women suffer domestic violence in silence, way too many, though in the minority men do too. A man I came across once confessed to me he suffered domestic violence from his wife.
Getting back to the book it was a very good read. I found myself perversely rooting for the women. I wanted to eat Sally’s baking of sweet delights. Loved the song a day Charlie sent to Sally. Very thoughtful and poignant. Different women in similar positions. Female bonding and supporting each other. Trying to find out who they are? What they once hoped to be. What lengths you would go to, to protect your children.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Publisher for an advanced e-book copy. Opinions about the book are entirely my own.

I really appreciate the author’s intention to bring forward the topic of domestic violence exacerbated by the lockdown in a dark humour filled story. I do believe it is a topic that people are reluctant to engage with and this lighthearted way of approaching murder and abuse while remaining respectful is quite ingenious.

Unfortunately, I found it a bit lost as to the tone of this book. I feel like it was a bit scared to go all the way in and embrace the ridiculous of the situation and stayed a bit on the serious side while also not having any of the characters having any real fear. There was a bit of an odd disconnect with the characters being quite apathetic towards the situation. I would believe that having a dead man in your living room for over a week, would be a tiny bit more stressful. Even the situations where one of the women could get discovered weren’t pushed far enough and no real tension could be felt. It should have gone way darker and way more humorous to give the story a bit more rhythm. The pace was just too slow and scenes were quite repetitive with all women’s voices blending into one. Unsure if that was on purpose to showcase the universal situation but this broke even further the pace of the story and made it feel as if it wasn’t going anywhere.

I’m sad I didn’t like it but between the apathetic and sometimes insufferable characters and the slow and repetitive pace, at no point I was enticed to keep on reading. Really appreciate raising awareness to the issues exacerbated by lockdown but it was not simply not enough on its own.

I thought this was brilliantly written. It raises awareness about a topic that is prevalent but so often ignored, delving into the why women can't 'just leave him'. It covered so many aspects of domestic abuse and how lockdown impacted it. What stood out to me is this idea of loss of a life that could've been. When the men died, the women could start to live. It was heartbreakingly honest and darkly hilarious. It worked really well and some parts had me laughing out loud.

The other thing that really struck me was the friendship between the women. I loved how diverse they were and how we got insight into different cultures and circumstances. It warmed my heart even when they were digging a grave together!

I think this is a book that the world really needs. It managed to be an interesting, funny story while also educating on the terrible realities so many women face. An important read.

The Best Way To Bury Your Husband we meet Sally, married to Jim for 20 years and been subject to his mental and physical abuse for just as long. When she finally snaps, the release is a little shortlived when she realises that she now has his body to get rid of... who would have thought that it was this common interest that would introduce her to some new friends!?

I have mixed feelings about this book, for no other reason than I really enjoyed reading it, but the context is actually horrific. The statistics of the number of women who are killed everyday are horrendous to read, but these figures skyrocketed during lockdown and, despite this book being full of dark humour, it also highlights the subject sensitively and in a very female-empowering way.