Book Review: The Family Plot by Megan Collins

 

Book: The Family Plot

Author: Megan Collins 

Pages: 382

Read on: Kindle 

Read in: ~3 hours 

Plot Summary: At twenty-six, Dahlia Lighthouse is haunted by her upbringing. Raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents, she is unable to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother, Andy, when they were sixteen.

After several years away and following her father’s death, Dahlia returns to the house, where the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their father’s plot is another body—Andy’s, his skull split open with an ax.

Dahlia is quick to blame Andy’s murder on the serial killer who terrorized the island for decades, while the rest of her family reacts to the revelation in unsettling ways. Her brother, Charlie, pours his energy into creating a family memorial museum, highlighting their research into the lives of famous murder victims; her sister, Tate, forges ahead with her popular dioramas portraying crime scenes; and their mother affects a cheerfully domestic facade, becoming unrecognizable as the woman who performed murder reenactments for her children. As Dahlia grapples with her own grief and horror, she realizes that her eccentric family, and the mansion itself, may hold the answers to what happened to her twin.

Things I Liked: 

1. This is a very atmospheric book. The big mansion on an island. The history of a gory home invasion casting a pall of eerie gloom over the place. A family whose mother is obsessed with serial killers, especially, their victims. Not only obsessed but also teaches her kids about these killers and their victims, even re-enacting their deaths, holding little memorial services for the victims of serial killers on their death anniversaries. So, it is a creepy backdrop against which the story is set. 

2. The book is a huge hat tip to classic true crime and fans of true crime. If you are a true crime aficionado  then you are going to love all the references in this book. Names of both victims and serial killers are mentioned quite casually in the book and if you are into true crime then you'll get all the references. 

3. Dysfunctional families are always interesting to read about and the Lighthouse family is as dysfunctional as it gets. The mother is a little too obsessed with true crime, the kids are singularly weird in different ways and the father is disinterested in everything apart from hunting and teaching his two sons how to hunt. 

Things I Didn't Like: 

1. This book was (and still is) very, very hyped on BookTube and Bookstagram because of the aforementioned references to true crime and its atmospheric setting. However, the author takes this creepy family and its mater's obsession with true crime to an unrealistic, over-the-top and implausible levels. The mother's obsession with serial killers and their victims makes her teach her kids all about the killers, their modus operandi and about each of their victims. She re-enacts, with enthusiasm, props and all, the deaths of victims in her home school classroom. The kids are home schooled only about serial killers and very little else! While I enjoy reading about dysfunctional families, this one feels really, really unrealistic and desperately made up.  After a few chapters, the schtick of true crime obsession and the weird mother gets really, really old! 

2. The resolution of the mystery of Andy's death is a humongous let down! The motive behind his murder, the reason why he was killed, is so insanely bizarre and unbelievable that it made me want to scream! There was no reason for poor Andy to end up dead the way he did! No good, sensible, understandable reason! That is my biggest issue with this book. The author has tried too hard to be edgy, but it is done so badly and so pointlessly that is doesn't have the intended effect at all! After reading the whole book, when you find out how Andy got killed, you want to throw something at someone! It is so pointless! 

3. The book has a secondary mystery- that of a serial killer, who has been killing young women on the island for several years now. This "mystery" is so predictable that you can guess who the killer is, pretty much, from the beginning of the book! It is so obvious when some favourite activities of one of the characters of the book is described in the first 5% of the book! It is utterly dull! I don't know what the author was going for but this "mystery" falls flat instead of being gritty and intriguing. 

Rating: 2/5

Do not waste your money!