Keep It In The Family by John Marrs - Book Review

Keep It In The Family by John Marrs

Genre: Thriller

2.5 Stars 

One Liner: Intriguing premise but a convoluted presentation 

*****

Mia and Finn invest all their money in an old house. They are busy repairing it when Mia realizes she is pregnant. The couple is elated. However, Mia sees a message carved into the wall in the nursery, resulting in a series of incidents that change their lives forever. 

The past horrors of the house come to light, bringing more secrets to the surface. The killer is around, too, lurking and waiting for the right time. With the dangers surrounding Mia, her newborn, and the family, can they find a way to deal with it? Can Mia save her family and herself? 

The story comes in the first-person POV of six characters. Sigh! Why!!! 

My Thoughts: 

The book starts with an intriguing chapter and alternates between different POVs and timelines. It can be super confusing if you don’t note the years (something I gave up halfway through the book). 

The information comes in bits and pieces, but we are essentially going around in circles, with each character having its POV [Mia, Finn, Dave (Mai’s father-in-law), and Debbie (Mia’s mother-in-law]. We know many of them are hiding something but what? It gets revealed towards the end. 

Though things aren’t too graphic, we know that a lot of bad things happen to kids. If you are sensitive about this, be prepared for it. What made it easy to read is the writing (and not in a good way). I wasn’t the least bit affected, as the whole thing felt distant. 

Thrillers tend to have unlikeable characters. Here, except for Mia (with exceptions again), the rest are pretty much unlikable. DC Mark is cool, though (he has very limited space in the book and is not explored at all). 

The reveals start around 63%, which means a majority of the second half has a twist, reveal, twist, reveal, and so on. It got tiring when I could already see what the twist would be. I don’t usually mind guessing right, but here, it gets too much. 

The epilogue is like a final and special presentation, but I couldn’t feel awed by it. There are enough hints to show this would happen. In fact, I might have upped the stars if the twist deals with Mia. 

The best part of the book is that I could speed-read it and not miss any detail. That frees a day for me (hence the additional 0.5 stars). But it shows how much rambling could have been edited to make the narration taut. 

The title is all you need to guess the plot. Really. It can’t be more evident than this, and once again, I pat myself on the back for listening to my friends and asking for help titling my stories. 

To summarize, Keep It In The Family could have been a wow thriller but ended up underwhelming. I see the author has written some fab works, so time to check them out. 

Thank you, NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK, for the eARC. 

#NetGalley #KeepItInTheFamily 

*****

P.S: Also, can we please not have men ‘press the right buttons’ to excite a woman? It sounds weird.