Review: The Family Experiment by John Marrs

Name: The Family Experiment
Series: Stand Alone (Technically?)
Author: John Marrs
Publisher: Macmillan
Format: Kindle
Genres: Adult, Thiller, Dystopian, Science Fiction, Mystery
Noted Tropes: Flawed Characters, Reality TV, Virtual X (Children in this case), Technological Advances
Steam or Spice: None

Rating:

Synopsis: Goodreads
Some families are virtually perfect . . .

The world’s population is soaring, creating overcrowded cities and an economic crisis. And in the UK, breaking point has arrived. A growing number of people can no longer afford to start families let alone raise them.

But for those desperate to experience parenthood, there is an alternative. For a monthly subscription fee, clients can create a virtual child from scratch who they can access via the metaverse and a VR headset. To launch this new initiative, the company behind Virtual Children has created a reality tv show. It will follow ten couples as they raise a Virtual Child from birth to the age of eighteen but in a condensed nine-month time period. The the right to keep their virtual child or risk it all for the chance of a real baby . . .

Review:

The Family Experiment was the December Book Club pick of the month from the Cody & James Book Club on Fable. I personally voted for The Family Experiment because when I was researching the books for the month I found that a couple of John Marrs’ books that I wanted to read! Seemed like a no brain to me. Now, above I wrote that The Family Experiment is technically a stand-alone, and that’s because my research shows that a lot of John Marrs’ books are actually in a connected universe, but my understanding is you don’t have to read any of the other books in order to read this one.

The Family Experiment follows multiple couples as they compete on a reality TV show where the competition is raising a metachild (virtual child) from birth to 18 years old. This of course is happening with the watchful eyes of the viewers who are voting for their favourite couple. The favourite and ultimate winners will be faced with 2 choices, keep their virtual child or be given the prize fund so they can start a real world family of their own.

I will start with the fact that this book has multiple POVs and each POV (except a couple) can be told from either perspective of each person in the couple. That is, they can be complicated and hard to string together. There are so many story lines going on, plus the overarching story of the reality TV show, that keeping track of them all is difficult. Within the book club I saw multiple comments about how people wished they’d made notes or started a spreadsheet in order to track things… I don’t think any book should be that complicated to follow.

That being said, I’d be wrong to say I hated it. In fact I loved the story. I loved finding out more and more about all of the couples – loved the idea that people aren’t all what they seem on TV (which we know from real life! Though these lines seem to be blurring with the rise of youtubers and tiktok stars). Dimitri and Zoe and Woody and Tina were my favourite couples to follow along and all of the twists that were being slowly revealed kept catching me off guard and I love that about a thriller. It certainly makes me excited to read more of John Marrs’ universe!

Overall, I love that the book club once again made me read something that I don’t think I’d have seen before and therefore wouldn’t have picked up. So if you’re willing to work through the complicated tracking of the story lines, the story within the pages of The Family Experiment are well worth reading! I’m looking forward to driving into more of his work.

Reading With Tyler