Family Plot by Megan Collins

To be honest, there wasn’t much expectation riding on this. I didn’t even request it originally when it came up on Netgalley. I read the author’s previous book Winter Sister and found it thoroughly mediocre. But then the publisher sent the direct link and I was like, oh why not, it is, after all, such a nice cover. And what do you know…second time’s the charm. This book was a dramatic improvement upon its predecessor. The writing, the plotting, the character development…all so many levels up, you’d think you were in a different video game altogether. I certainly wouldn’t have attributed both books to the same author without knowing that to be the case. I mean, maybe the overly emotional ending showed some similarities, but that’s about it.
So, here’s something new and original to set this book above the homogeneous sea of same sort of thriller. This is a story of a family obsessed with true crime. And sure, true crime is a national obsession, even SNL just spoofed the neverending murder docuseries trend, but this family is extra crazy about it. It’s really their mother’s obsession, but since she’s the one with the finances to raise her family in a sort of minicult of six on a secluded island in an isolated mansion, that’s exactly what she did. People with money, right…Anyway, so this (let’s call it like it is, the book doesn’t seem to) lunatic of a woman marries a man of her dreams who seems to do nothing but hunt and they make four babies, two close in age older siblings and a younger set of twins. Their place that looks like a giant shrine to murder victims, the kids are all named after famous murder victims and they live on an island that has famously had a never apprehended serial killer. Not quite normal, is it…no small surprise the kids bail out as soon as they become of age and get their inheritance. But one of them has never come back. And his devastated twin has spent the last decade trying to find him.
Now their father’s death brings the family together once again and a body is found in the family plot. And with those bones, many tragic and ugly secrets from the past get unburied also. Slowly, but inexorably, the Lighthouses, the family who lived for so long in the dark and ritualistically worshipped it from a safe distance, will find just how close the darkness has always been.
This worked well on many levels. From an authentically creepy original premise to excellent representation of the variously mentally scarred characters (and it stands to mention again how normalized the mother was in this novel, considering, WTF) to the expertly sustained suspense. For a while there were several credible culprits and you really had to work to try to figure it out.
The things that didn’t work perfectly were few. The main reveal comes (not too surprisingly) at about 75%, which is pretty early on and creates for a too long of a denouement. Although there was one last great twist thrown in in the last 25% to make it worth it. The ending did get slightly too sentimental, considering how messed up the rest of the story is, but it worked. I liked the way it played around in the morally grey zone, instead of confirming to the rigidity of black and white moral presets.
So yeah, good, almost great even. This novel goes as dark as you’d want from a work of psychological fiction, with a positively gothic scenery and a clever commentary on the national obsession. It was entertaining, exciting and fun. I enjoyed it very much. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.