4.5⭐️ Such a clever concept, this was so much fun to read. The skilful humour and layers of plotting made this an enjoyable and engaging experience, it was dark but at the same time full of a surprising amount of positivity. Taking the time to breathe deeply and fully understand your situation gives you the opportunity for clarity. I loved the mindfulness quotes, and have written a few down as they really resonated with me. I am determined to add a little bit of mindfulness into my life, so many of the ideas make sense.

Sent on a mindfulness course by his wife, it has powerful repercussions. Changing viewpoint allows for unconventional ideas and solutions to be used. A lot of positives but with dark humour. An enjoyable book that will make you smile.

Mindfulness is defined as the awareness of one’s internal state and surroundings. Not something that I’ve been able to come to terms with, until now! Bjorn Diemel is a criminal defence lawyer whose main client is Dragan Sergowicz, leader of a crime gang. Bjorn is separated from his wife Katharina but dotes on his daughter Emily and would do anything to keep her safe in his life. Kudos to the translator, it must be difficult to translate humour but this worked a treat, from start to finish. Briefly, permanently stressed Bjorn is attending mindfulness courses and starts to use the lessons learned in ensure his life with Emily changes for the better and he can hopefully reconcile with his wife. Unfortunately this involves the literally frying of Dragan and then taking over his empire. Of course it becomes more than natural for a number of other murders to take place to ensure his state of mindfulness remains calm! A tongue in cheek murder thriller translated from German but losing none of its dark humour in the translation. Beware of some seriously gory bits though! The characterisations are good and despite his predilection for murder Bjorn is slightly redeemed by his undying (pun intended) love for Emily. You will never look at a mindfulness book in the same way again. Enjoyable and highly entertaining. 4.5⭐️

Murder Mindfully is already an international bestseller and a German series on Netflix, so I was excited to read the English translation out this year from Faber & Faber. Björn, a criminal defence lawyer has been given an ultimatum by his wife to achieve a better work/life balance. He enrols in a class for mindfulness and soon finds himself employing those techniques as his world takes a sharp turn into murdering people. This book is full of dark humour, and I think this I something a British audience can really get behind, so I imagine this translation will be a popular one in the UK. The juxtaposition of using mindfulness techniques in a murder and gang hierarchy situation is a great one and it’s such a fun premise. There’s a lot of strands and stakes running throughout and the read really gripped me as I raced through the pages, hoping that our anti-hero Björn would get away with murder. I had a few issues with the writing, although it’s hard to know if this is down to the original author or the translation. At the beginning of the book, I found it a little hard to get into because of the amount of odd verbiage used. There are a lot of unnecessary words, and it felt like someone had relied a little too heavily on their thesaurus. For example, when describing an office: ‘it looked like it had just won an award in the antediluvian 70s’, the use of antediluvian here is an odd choice and jarred with the style of the rest of the writing. This did fade out as I got more into the story though. I really loved the chapter headings which included a paragraph from the Mindfulness book which would directly relate to what the chapter was about. It was quite good advice, but it also made for a fun mini-spoiler for how the events were going to unfold or what might happen next. However, I didn’t like the fact that when this quote became relevant in the story, the same paragraph was then copy and pasted directly into the prose. I think if it had been paraphrased as a reminder this would have worked better than just a copy paste. I really enjoyed the plot; it escalates nicely and in some places you really felt empathy to this murderer of a main character. However, sometimes his character came across as a bit too unlikeable – especially with how he speaks about his wife, and some of the dialogue choices shocked me as they seemed contrasting with how Björn had been portrayed up until that point. You really want a book like this to be centred around someone you can route for in bad circumstances, rather than just an awful person killing awful people. The balance of this seemed a little off kilter in places. Overall, Murder Mindfully is a really fun read and a brilliant premise - next time you turn to murder, makes sure to centre yourself and practice mindfulness! Thank you to NetGalley and Faber & Faber for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

You know exactly what you’re getting with this book. Equally mindfulness cheerleader (full of mantras and advice) and murderer’s POV, this twists both genres on their heads and makes a deliciously high concept mash-up that entertains, with Type A lead Björn taking mindulness to a whole other level. Enjoyable and suitably episodic (there’s a Netflix adaptation—hang on, let me just binge it… right, I’m back), this doesn’t go where you think it will and then of course it does. Crime, folks, does not pay.* * Unless you’re a crime writer. Three and a half stars, gleefully rounded up to four.