This was a quick read and kept me guessing until the end! I found the characters in the family to be well-developed and the central mystery to be engaging. I recommend!

Dark, twisted and with Knives Out vibes, The Family Plot is a solid murder mystery that will keep you guessing as you try to unravel the deep secrets of the Lighthouse family. Megan Collins delivers a wonderfully messed up and unnerving story that will have you saying “WTF?!?!” throughout the whole book.

The Lighthouse family congregates on Blackburn Island to mourn the death of the family patriarch. But this is no normal island or family. The island is famous for a slew of murders by a serial killer who was never caught. And as for the Lighthouse children, well, they grew up being homeschooled by their mother with a unique curriculum learning about and honoring famous murder victims. In fact, each of the 4 children in the Lighthouse family were named after several of these victims. For Dahlia Lighthouse (named after the Black Dahlia), returning to her childhood home brings up painful memories of the day her twin brother left home 10 years ago, never to be seen again. She uses this homecoming as an opportunity to search for clues of her missing brother, which highlights the unique eccentricity of this family while setting in motion events that reveal multiple shocking truths that are beyond her comprehension and send this already “unnatural” family spiraling deeper into the darkness.

Connecting to The Family Plot is easy because every family has their oddities and quirks. While the very bizarre history and actions of the Lighthouse family are not normal or directly relatable to the vast majority of us, the drama and emotions most certainly are something we all can understand. Grieving the loss of a loved one, having strong connections to siblings, being an outsider, seeking acceptance, wanting to be normal – these are experiences that we can appreciate because at some point everyone has felt something like this in their lives. Take out the murder worship and this is a book about a strange family trying to find their way. Pretty relatable if you ask me. And if you think that’s a stretch, that’s cool. Just enjoy a good old-fashioned whodunit with a darker version of The Addams Family.

The Family Plot does take a little time to really get going but stick with it. Drink in the peculiar details during the setup so that you’re prepared for a wild ride that rewards the reader by finishing with a disturbing flourish. A worthy mystery for fans of true crime, Alfred Hitchcock movies and Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone.

I decided to read this thriller for #SUMMERWEEN and was not disappointed! The premise of it sounded so creepy and mysterious, and I couldn't wait to find out more about this family and their secrets. I feel like this book would be perfect to read around Halloween as it gives off spooky vibes surrounding a family's burial site. There were many questions regarding who killed the brother and who else was involved, but the author takes an interesting turn on the story. I highly suggest picking this one up when it releases August 17th! Thank you to Netgalley and Atria books for the early reader's copy. I can't wait to see what Megan Collins writes next!

This was the second ARC by Megan Collins I’ve received and I enjoyed it a lot more than The Winter Sister.

I can’t remember it fully but I had found The Winter Sister to be a little bit melodramatic for my tastes. I didn’t get that feeling from The Family Plot. Considering the subject matter, it could have gone that way too.

I did find some of the plot easy to guess but I didn’t mind this time around so much. As long as it makes sense, which it did, that’s all that matters.

From the moment she was born, Dahlia Lighthouse, named for the murder victim The Black Dahlia, was raised around death. Homeschooled in a curriculum entirely devoted to crime alongside siblings also named for famous victims, her family lives and breathes murder. Each child escapes as soon as they are able, but struggles to fit in with the normalcy of life outside of their island. Ten years after Dahlia's twin brother goes missing, uncomfortable secrets rise to the surface and threaten to change the family's opinion of one another forever.

As someone interested in true crime and an avid consumer of the ID channel, podcasts, and YouTube videos, I appreciated The Family Plot. The characters, while odd in their own way, had mostly fleshed-out personalities and intricate relationships. I'm giving 4/5 stars because I feel like everything was done about 80% as well as it could have been. The reveals could have been more abrupt, and more worldbuilding around the family's strange way of life could have enriched the characters. I also think the author could have used the novel as a venue for examining the ethics of the true crime genre as a whole. This was set up well; there is one 'websleuth' character, and a true crime influencer, but I feel like this could have been more of a referendum on these roles in the true crime space.

The Family Plot is worth a read for readers of true crime and domestic thriller alike.

Note: I received a free ebook copy of The Family Plot in exchange for an honest review.

The Lighthouse family is "unnatural." That's what Dahlia's twin brother tells her before running away on his sixteenth birthday. It's not until ten years after Andy's disappearance that Dahlia returns to the family's isolated island mansion for their father's funeral and realizes that her brother never left the property at all. All this time, he's been buried in the family plot, in the grave set aside for their father, his skull split open with his own axe.

A serial killer has lurked on the island for decades, killing young women and branding them before leaving their bodies to be battered by the waves. Dahlia and her siblings were educated through the homeschool curriculum their mother devised, one that consisted of writing carefully researched reports about murder victims and holding annual ceremonies to honor their names. The siblings themselves were named after famous murder victims. Now, while Dahlia tries to figure out what happened to Andy, her older brother, Charlie, is planning to open the house as a memorial museum and her sister, Tate, is constructing an intricate diorama of the murder scene.

I really enjoyed this one. It's a mystery with a kind of traditional gothic feel to it. Even though I'm not a true crime expert by any stretch of the imagination, the author provides just enough context with her references that I never felt like I was missing too much.

This is the perfect story for true crime lovers. Collins successfully takes true crime obsession to the next level and intertwines it into a twisty, spine-chilling story with insane family dynamics that leave the reader staying up way too late to finish. It's full of dark family secrets and it's down right creepy.

This is by far my favorite book by Megan Collin. Her books have gotten better and better in my opinion.

This book takes you on a wild ride of the Lighthouse Family whose parents are obsessed with True Crime. They live on an island with its very own serial killer. They teach their children to honor victims of terrible crimes by doing rituals and other strange things. They even named their four children after murder victims. When Daniel Lighthouse (the father) dies, the four children come back to the home after being away for years and as Daniel's grave is being dug up they find another body in its place. Who is it and where did it come from?

I highly recommend it! The Family Plot comes out on August 17th! Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the e-arc!

Dahlia Lighthouse has lived and breathed true crime. Her family raised her and her siblings on a secluded island, educating them about famous crimes and regularly honoring the victims. Dahlia's heart was broken when her twin brother Andy disappeared when they were 16 - when his body is recovered years later, she starts to look for answers.

I loved the creepy premise of this novel and the true crime references throughout. Dahlia was a great protagonist and I initially loved following along with her investigation. However, some of the twists and reveals were a bit too obvious. The pacing also felt a little off - I didn't feel the suspense in the second half. That being said, this is a quick read that will likely satisfy a thriller craving! 3 stars.

Thank you to Atria Books for providing a NetGalley ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"From the author of The Winter Sister and Behind the Red Door, this "masterpiece of gothic suspense and horror, filled with dark family secrets and stunning twists" (Michele Campbell, author of It’s Always the Husband) follows a family obsessed with true crime as they gather to bury their patriarch - only to find another body already in his grave.

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."

While hanging out with a family as obsessed with true crime as I am would be cool... I think it's safer to read about them don't you?

The Lighthouse kids are all required to leave their family home at the age of eighteen. No problem. Especially when their upbringing is so bizarre that it’s hard to fathom that anyone could be a fully-functioning adult after that nightmare. So when their father dies, it’s the first time the children return to their childhood home. But it’s bittersweet because Dahlia knows that the one person she’d like to see, her twin Andy, is unlikely to return. He disappeared or left at the age of the 16 and no one has heard from him since.

Still, no one really pursued it because the family was so strange. The mom, having lost her wealthy parents to a violent crime, moved into the isolated mansion and married a small town boy on an island in order to get away from crime. And they educate their children about crimes so that they will be less likely to become victims themselves. And the kicker? There has been a serial killer committing murders on the very island they live on throughout their childhood.

As I type it now, it seems farfetched, but Megan Collins does such a great job of drawing the reader into the Lighthouses’ bizarre world that although it’s bananas, it’s believable. People are crazy for sure! I don’t want to give away too much. And it sounds like I have, right? This one is so action packed I’ve really only covered tidbits from the first two chapters.

If you are looking for an atmospheric, spooky horror tale that will keep you up long past your bedtime, this is it. Special thanks to Netgalley and Atria books for an advanced e-galley in exchange for my honest review. This one is out September 29.

'The Family Plot," by Megan Collins brings small town secrets to a thrilling new level. This book is filled with hairpin turns that will leave you breathlessly racing toward the end to find out who-dun-it.

Megan Collins' The Family Plot is a wholly unique thriller that will have you absolutely hooked from the first page. The novel opens with the Lighthouse siblings returning to their family home on Blackburn Island to bury their father and spend time with their mother. The Lighthouse children were raised in a most unusual way with a homeschool curriculum completely devoted to the study of brutal murders. Each of the four children are named after the victims of famed killers. Talk about a warped childhood!

Adding yet another layer of the unusual, Blackburn Island was haunted by a serial killer known as the Blackburn Killer while the Lighthouse children were growing up. The killer's identity remains a mystery to this day... So many layers to discover in this twisty little book!

Once the Lighthouse siblings converge on the family home, the action immediately ramps up when the body of their brother Andy is discovered in the burial plot reserved for their father. The family had long ago assumed that Andy ran away from home on the night of his 16th birthday after finding a note from him indicating that he had to get away. Andy's twin sister Dahlia is most devastated by his disappearance and is naturally rocked to the core by the discovery that her beloved brother has been dead all this time.
The entire premise of this book is quite clever and is definitely out of the typical thriller box. If you're looking for something completely different then this is definitely the book for you! Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. Look for this one from your favorite bookseller on August 17, 2021.

Dahlia has been looking for her missing brother since she left home. When she returns home for her fathers funeral, the family is shocked to find that her fathers burial plot already holds a body. They are even more dismayed when they find out that the body belongs to Andy, the brother Dahlia has been searching for. Who could have wanted Andy dead? Dahlia is determined to find out.

3.5 stars. Oh man what a messed up family. Obsessed with murder and ending up with their brother/son murdered. This one definitely had me second guessing everyone at one point or another. While It kept me on my toes, I felt like once the big twist happened there wasn’t much more to be excited about while reading. All the characters were so messed up, I don’t think I actually liked any of them, I more so felt pity for them and the childhood they had. The mom was also super messed up but I won’t go into details why! If you like Megan Collins other books, you will enjoy this one! I enjoyed it but was letting wanting just a bit more.

Oh to be famous, but not famous in the way everyone wants to be.

The Lighthouse family lived on Blackburn Island and was the most eccentric family anyone knew.

The children were home schooled by their mother, and she had them write essays about murders. They even had a room in the house that had a library of newspaper articles about murders committed around the world.

The oddest thing is that their mother named them after a person that was murdered or someone that committed murder.

We learn that Dahlia is named after Black Dahlia an actress who was murdered.

Charlie was named after the Lindbergh baby.

Tate was named after a movie star who then turned into a bloody body.

Andy was named for Lizzie Borden's father.

We meet all the children as they returned home when their father died.

The only one missing was Andy, Dahlia's twin. He had been gone for ten years. We did get to meet him, but not in person.

THE FAMILY PLOT continues as we get a glimpse of how their life was growing up and how they are interacting at the present time.

We also see that Dahlia finds things out she never knew about her family and secrets that were kept.

THE FAMILY PLOT can definitely be classified as Gothic and odd, but it will keep your interest because you will want to see what really was going on in this household for all those years.

Very well written and keeps your interest, but this is the most unique story line I have ever read.

If you like surprise endings and odd characters, you won't want to miss THE FAMILY PLOT. 4/5

This book was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

While I typically love psychological thrillers, I wasn’t sure what to expect with The Family Plot because it really felt more like a story about a family finding their way than a thriller. It definitely had a feeling of darkness though throughout the entire narrative, which was enhanced by the remote island location.

The Lighthouse family reunites after the death of their father. Having been away from home for more than a decade, all of the children return – minus the one (Andy) that disappeared when he was sixteen. Andy’s twin Dahlia has spent years waiting for her brother to come back to her until his body, with his skull split open by an ax, is found in their father’s burial plot. As Dahlia struggles with her grief and tries to understand what happened, she begins to unravel their unusual upbringing and how it’s intertwined with the island’s history.

I found The Family Plot to be a bit slow to start and I had trouble getting into at first, but once the family’s background and their timeline growing up on the secluded island was established, it became much more interesting and the plot became the focal point. I have to say that I also enjoyed the nods to real-world serial killer victims, which each of the kids were named after – Dahlia after the Black Dahlia, Andy for Lizzie Borden’s father, Tate as in Sharon Tate, and Charlie after Charles Lindbergh. While it took me a minute to get into this book, by the end when I finished, I just breathed “wow.” The clues were all their throughout the entire novel and while the ending wasn’t entirely a surprise, it still hit me pretty hard. Megan Collins did a fantastic job of twisting the storylines and interweaving the suspects. Everyone seemed to have some form of alibi and motive, so that the plot twists became so twisted and made me second-guess every suspect until the very convoluted end.

Thank you to Atria Books, Netgalley and Megan Collins for letting me read The Family Plot early. This book publishes on August 17.

Wow this book is creepy, suspenseful and fills up my little muderino heart. I love true crime podcasts, documentaries and mysteries and Megan Collins has given us a great fictional story that felt so real to me. This story is very well written and completely chilling with incredible atmosphere that would translate perfectly to screen. Family drama, trigger warnings a plenty and I highly recommend it.

A family pained with loss decides to turn it over the best way they can, by honoring the tragedies around them. The four kids of the Lighthouse family are homeschooled, they learn about crime and murders, they write reports on conspiracy theories, and they life a life very different from their neighbors. This story is told from the point of view of Dahlia and after her father’s death she now returns home for the first time in a very long time just to be hit with another tragedy. As they all try to cope the best ways they know how, Dahlia digs deeper to try to find the truth.

The Family Plot by Megan Collins
Source: NetGalley and Atria Books
Rating: 2½/5 stars

The Bottom Line: I will freely admit, I read this book in two marathon sessions but that isn’t necessarily indicative of how much I liked this book. In truth, I found this book to be somewhat perplexing. While I fully appreciate this is a fictional story, I guess I just need my fiction to be a bit more believable and/or realistic for my satisfaction. This is most prominently on display when the Lighthouse family backstory is fully revealed; I found myself thinking how absolutely unbelievable the whole family is and how, even for fiction, this isn’t working.

From start to finish, the Lighthouse family is, as one character puts it, “unnatural.” In fact, much to my great displeasure, this sentiment is often repeated throughout the book not only verbally, but also in the actions of the characters. With each new revelation, I found myself sinking further into disbelief but, like a train wreck, I couldn’t stop watching either. Though the characters are meant to be deep and terribly disturbed, they come off more as immature adults who won’t deal with their issues. I have trouble with characters who refuse to deal with their issues which means I couldn’t ever find a character in this book to root for, though the plot would suggest rooting for the entire Lighthouse family.

I don’t feel a reader should ever walk away from a book more confused than when they started the book and that’s what happened here. I finished this book with a deep sense of dissatisfaction and wonder at what I’d just read. I admit, I couldn’t stop reading, but I don’t think that inability to stop was for the right reasons.

This is one unusual family! The Lighthouses are obsessed with the topic of true crime, and the townspeople try to avoid them if at all possible.
Dahlia Lighthouse, now 26, returns to the island after the death of her father, still haunted by the disappearance of her twin brother, Andy, 10 years earlier.
When her father’s plot is opened for the planned burial, to Dahlia’s horror, Andy’s body is already there, with a massive hole in his skull.
Talk is that Andy was the victim of a serial killer who had been operating around that time, but family members are acting in a strange manner. Brother Charlie is creating a museum highlighting the family’s research into famous murder victims. Sister Tate is making dioramas portraying crime scenes, and their mother is acting as though nothing is wrong.
The plot is ingenious, and you won’t figure out the answers until the end.

3.5 Stars

Dahlia Lighthouse and her three siblings grew up secluded in a house referred to by the townspeople as “Murder Mansion.” They received a very morbid upbringing and home school education by their parents who were obsessed with the victims of famous murderers, to the point of naming their children after murder victims. Instead of science and math lessons, their mother reenacted murders and assigned them “murder reports” instead of book reports. On their sixteenth birthday, Dahlia’s brother Andy runs away from home. Ten years later Dahlia and her other two siblings return home to comfort their grieving mother after the death of their father. When their father’s grave is dug up, they find that the plot has already been occupied for some time- with the bones of their brother, Andy...

I have some very mixed feelings about this book. The book started super intriguingly, the really strange family dynamic and how these parents raised and educated their children all about famous murder was really quirky and interesting. Shortly after the beginning though I got so irritated with the characters and plot that I debated stopping and not finishing. Fast forward to about the 50% mark and I was then reading as fast as I possibly could and didn’t want to put this down. I finally decided to give it 3.5 stars because the ending was anticlimactic for me personally and the plot twists were all too predictable. There were three unique twists to this book, the first one I figured out in the first 5% of the book, the second one I had figured out long before it was revealed toward the end and one I never predicted. Overall, a solid novel that I would still recommend as it has such a unique plot and really had me hooked toward the second half (despite predicting what would happen).

Thank you to Megan from Simon and Schuster for providing me with an e-copy via Netgalley to read!

Thank you so much NetGalley, Atria Books and Megan Collins for this advanced ebook copy!

Megan has became a favorite of mine. I just read The Winter Girls and really enjoyed that book!

The Family Plot--
A dysfunctional, true-crime obsessed family, a missing brother, a serial killer, and an island mansion filled with murder and mystery!

I loved the characters--
Full of wonderful brilliant characters. Dahlia, Tate, and brothers Charlie and Andy
The story is told from Dahlia's POV. Her twin brother Andy just up and left when they were teenagers and she has spent everyday since trying to find her missing twin!
Tate is an Instagram Influencer and Charlie is an actor!
Honestly I enjoyed every character. They each had their own issues they are dealing with and trying to come face to face with their past won't be easy!

The story--
Was intriguing and held my attention. All in all, this book was a fantastic read. I enjoyed the journey and everything in it. It's fast-paced, totally unpredictable, and one with a twist that will basically blow your mind!
I did not see what was coming!

My Ratings
I Liked It! Enjoyable, fun, different, easy read!

Thank you again for giving me the chance to read and review this ebook.copy.