This was a take on a locked-room mystery with a twisty ending. Unfortunately, I’ve read several locked-room mysteries over the last year or so and there is only so much you can do with this plot type that this one fell a bit flat, and I think that is simply because I’ve read this plot line in other books.

What I did like was the idea that Olivia is looking at her own family’s history of psychopathy. I enjoyed the twist at the end, however I had a feeling something like that was coming. If anything, this family will make even the craziest family look normal!

If thrillers are your thing, this is a good choice!

Thank you to @netgalley, author Elle Marr, and Thomas and Merced Publishing for the digital copy. This is my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, the Publishers, and Elle Marr for giving me an ARC of The Family Bones! This was an intense ride - figuring out are you a psychopath like the rest of your family? How will you make it out of a family retreat with a whole family of psychopaths? I thoroughly enjoyed the twist and turns that this book had! Some of the twists are pretty evident, but it was still enjoyable to see how it would be played out. I also felt like I learned a lot about neurodiversity!

Olivia Ericksen is a graduate student studying neurodivergence as it relates specifically to psychopathy - and she has plenty of direct experience with the condition: she comes from an infamous family filled with them. Her paternal family tree is filled with diagnosed psychopaths, some dangerous and in prison, some able to function in normal society. She mostly avoids the Ericksens, but when a family reunion invitation at a remote mountain resort owned by her rich uncle appears in her mailbox, her mother encourages her to attend to mend ties. She decides to go, but things quickly deteriorate when a storm strands the family at the resort, cut off from the rest of the world and violence ensues. And no amount of academic training has prepared Olivia for this.

There's a great subplot involving a true crime podcaster, but the less you know about that the better!

Wow, this book was such a wild ride! I loved this unique twist on the vacation gone wrong genre, in that we know there's potential for things to go wrong from the very beginning, and yet, Olivia chooses to put herself in this situation, with encouragement from her mother and her fiancé, hoping for the best, but right from the first page (a newspaper article announcing that things indeed did go horribly wrong), we know things devolve into chaos. So the anticipation is just so deliciously fun! And as things unfold it's so creepy and tense to watch. There's so many red herrings and suspects - who to choose!

And there's some good twists in there! Oh the twists! I loved them! I won't give anything away, but the solutions as things fall into place are really great and worth the wait. I practically had my jaw on the floor, because I thought I had things figured out, but boy was I wrong. So wrong. And that is the hallmark of a good story. When you can convince people they think they have it all figured out, but then the ending pulls it out from under them.

I will definitely be looking out for more from this author in the future. I was incredibly satisfied with this book and can't wait to see was she comes up with next!

Man, I really do love a good family drama thriller. This one wasn't my favorite. I liked the dual timeline. I loved the writing style and will pick up more from this author.

What a ride from start to finish! This book is incredible! If you're looking for a twisty thriller with complicated family relationships then this book is for you. There are so many words that will be lost at the end of this and you'll be wondering what the heck is happening the entire time!!

Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an ARC!

Nature vs nurture and the role of psychopathy is an interesting topic. There are a lot of characters to keep track of and the pacing was a bit slow at times. I enjoyed the use of multiple voices as well as other sources such as newspaper articles.

Great book and the story was all consuming. It was a ride from start to finish. I loved the voice the author wrote in.

*I recieved this book as an ARC*

This book was amazing. Right off the bat I knew I was going to love it. With the true crime podcaster Birdie, I knew it was going to be right up my alley!

The Erickson family were wild, as expected. I enjoyed getting to know all of the different characters! It was very suspenful and kept me on the edge of my seat!

My reason for the four stars is because I felt like the relationship with Howard was a weird dynamic. Kinda put me off! I know this was explained in the end with the twist (I guessed it!) Also as much as I loved Birdies character I was let down by what she did in the end. I was yelling at my kindle about some of the decisions she was making!

Overall great read and would highly recommend!

I tried to like this book, I really really did. The book is intelligently written with lots of clinical terms and you can tell the author did a lot of research. I also liked that the premise was so unique, a family reunion of psychopaths where someone goes missing and another turns up dead. Throw a true crime podcaster into the mix and it sounds exciting, right? But this was a slooooow burn of a book and not in a good way. Honestly, I was bored out of my skull. I am getting really tired of thrillers using the  "no phones allowed" as part of their plot. Who would allow that rule if they're on a retreat with a bunch of psychopaths!?

The book is from dual points of view with newspaper clippings and journal entries. I love a good epistolary novel but this one was like three different books smashed together, it was incohesive. I also had a hard time connecting to any of the characters. Maybe that was the author's intent with a family full of psychotics. I couldn't get into the story itself either and I struggled to finish it. There were no real surprises and I was very unsatisfied with the ending and the book in general.

This is a story that is intense and bothersome at the same time with images of a psychopathic family.

At the beginning of the book, there’s an ancestral tree of “The Eriksen Family.” When I see it, I am warned that I will need to keep track of a lot of people which for me is never an easy task. Yet, it’s somehow manageable as the characters are well developed with distinct, memorable personalities.

The book follows Olivia who is a social media influencer and grad student from UC Davis studying mental health issues. Her father, Ephraim, is in prison for insider trading. Her grandfather, Edgar, was murdered by his uncle. Her cousin, Jimmy, has tendencies toward schizophrenia. Her Aunt Lois started fires once. And her cousin, Ricky, plays quirky games with the dog.

Olivia is concerned as she is approaching 23 years old when psychopathy usually pops up in the family. She said instead of allowing her fears to take over, she would study the disorders that have plagued the family over generations.

Her mother, Elise, is encouraging her to attend the first Eriksen family reunion in ten years. It’s where she can interview her grandfather for his observations of psychopathy in the family. Her husband-to-be, Howard, is anxious to meet everyone.

Besides Olivia, Birdie plays a big part in the book. She has a podcast of unsolved true crimes. Then there are timely news reports and journal entries from an outsider who follows her boyfriend to meet his family in the remote area of Oregon where the reunion takes place.

It’s easy to get lost in the words and try to make sense of what’s happening. As I’m reading this story, a crazy thought riddles my brain. I’m trying to think about anyone that I may have known with tendencies toward being violent, manipulative, antisocial, and someone who lacks empathy. Well, that could be anybody.

While the end was – for me – predictable in some ways, I was glued to what was happening. Olivia said psychopathy is like the crazed killers we see in movies. Each piece was skillfully pieced together with an ending that brings a breath-taking closure to this story.

My thanks to Elle Marr, Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for providing me with the opportunity to read this advanced book with an expected release date of March 7, 2023.

Thank you to Thomas&Mercer for a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

The Family Bones is a wild ride. Shocking and unexpected at every single turn, it is the definition of a thriller, both psychological and otherwise. Reading about the Erikson family is a crazy experience that will haunt you.

I don't want to reveal anything else about the story. If you like thrillers set at a summer camp in the secluded woods where every single member of this family could be a suspect, you'll love The Family Bones. The twists and turns happen at sort of expected times, but you won't guess what they could be. What an exciting read, one that I'm sure I'll want to reread in a few years.

The Family Bones is a gripping thriller that follows Olivia as she attends her family reunion. However, this is no normal family reunion, as Oliva's family has a legacy of psychopathy. Oliva is a psycology students and hopes that a weekend with her relatives will give her dissertation the primary sources that it needs. After one family member is discovered dead and another disappears, Olivia begins to question whether coming to this weekend retreat for her studies was worth it.

The story is told through two main POVs and then through a spattering of journal entries and media articles. I thought the weaving of the plots between the POVs and other entries added to the overall narrative. In general, the book is well-paced and well-written, and there are quite a few twists. However, I was able to predict the ending from early on, which may frustrate some readers. Because the main topic of the book is psychopathy, there are several upsetting descriptions of cruetly (including animal cruelty), torture, murder, and incest. Due to these scenes, I did not enjoy the book as much as I had hoped.

Thank you to Thomas & Mercer and Elle Marr via Netgalley for the early copy to read and review.

4 stars for the psychopathy!

I found this story enjoyable and thrilling. This is a locked room, snowed in during a family retreat mystery packed to the brim with psychopaths. Both violent and non-violent types so we get all sorts. I liked the actual psych research aspect as Olivia is in school working on her dissertation exploring whether psychopathy is apparent from birth. She wants to talk to her Grandpa to get his take as their family is full of psychopaths. She ends up with her answer by the end! I also liked that there were so many types of disorders described among the family members: disassociation, narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and more.

One thing I think will be mentioned a bunch among reviews is that there are a lot of family members present at the retreat (and not present) to keep straight. The author provides an Erickson Family Tree at the beginning of the book. I took a screenshot of it on my phone and kept that handy to refer back to while reading on my Kindle. Once I got pretty straight what names were the aunts and uncles it was easier to know what characters were being talked about or to. The author also does a great job of referring to those characters by their relation rather than just name. For example, Lois isn't usually referred to as just Lois; she's usually called Great Aunt Lois.

There is a second POV of a true-crime podcaster, Birdie, who is researching a missing woman. Her chapters are unrelated to the Erickson family retreat but as she investigates we learn that she may be looking for someone related to the family, after all.

There were some moments that were OTT (like capture the flag) but to me this felt right in the sense of this family. They are a bunch of whackos so it tracks. I did find some of the twists surprising, which I always love.

Overall I thought this was great, kept me interested in the story and never felt dull. I have one big bone to pick and it is a single word in the Chapter 27 Journal Entry.... WHY!? But not enough to make me drop my rating ;-)

“Growing up, each of my birthdays was eclipsed by dread—terror that this was the year I would snap and reveal I, too, had what my family has come to call ‘the Eriksen twitch.’”*

Olivia Erikson, a graduate student who monetizes discussions of her relatives’ psychological issues on social media, is invited to a family reunion at a remote resort. Looking to get interviews with diagnosed psychopaths in her family to complete her thesis, she heads to the resort with her fiancé Howard. Meanwhile, true crime podcaster Birdie is on the trail of a cold case crime that may have been committed by an Erikson.

This book is told through the first person perspectives of Olivia and Birdie as well as through new articles and journal entries. Birdie quickly became my favorite character as she followed the clues to find out what happened to the woman in her latest case, while doing her best to be a good wife and mother. Olivia fascinated me because of her desire to understand the effects of nature and nurture on psychopathy, because she viewed her own mental landscape as a potential ticking bomb. I had a hard time buying her relationship with Howard and his desire to prioritize telling her family of their engagement, while the body count at the resort rose. At times, he struck me as an embodiment of the “too stupid to live” trope, making me less invested in his survival.

The cast of characters is so large that a family tree is included. I really liked how Olivia constantly psychoanalyzed her relatives and how, as the tension increased, the characters formed alliances with some relatives and threw others under the proverbial bus. Uncle Zane, the organizer of the retreat and owner of the resort, awesomely tried to keep the activities rolling. This nicely kept the plot moving forward and provided opportunities for various relatives to interact. The two plot lines (Olivia’s and Birdie’s) worked well together as did the epistolary pieces. This book is candy for those of us who have a pet interest in abnormal psychology.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to Thomas & Mercer for providing an Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley.

*Please note that my review is based on uncorrected text.

⭐️: 3/5

Olivia’s family is well known in the world of true-crime for a legacy of psychopaths spanning through the generations, and she spends her time as a graduate student studying the age old question of nature v. nurture. She has kept her family at an arm’s length, but agrees to attend a family reunion that soon turns deadly. Meanwhile, true-crime podcaster Birdie is following a story that leads her right into the same mountain resort as Olivia’s family reunion.

This book was a lot harder to get into than I thought it was going to be, considering how interesting and riveting the synopsis makes it sound. It came down to a couple of things. First off, there was something off-putting, approaching disingenuous and unrealistic, about how both neurological and personality disorders were discussed and portrayed, especially when umbrella statements kept being made about them all. Then, once we got into the meat of the story, Olivia started exhibiting grade A stupid FMC characteristics. The whole “oh no, I’m being falsely accused of a crime, LET ME GET MY DNA ALL OVER THE EVIDENCE WHILE I iNvEsTiGaTe” storyline is so distractingly unrealistic to me, because like, if you’re worried about being framed, the last thing you logically want to do is make it easier to frame you 🙄 There were certainly a lot of twists toward the end of the book, and while some of them were a little surprising, I wasn’t thrilled by any of them in the way I wanted to be. Anyway, I ended up power reading from 20% onward just to get to the end, and while the story definitely fared better than the character development, this one was just mediocre for me.

Thank you to @netgalley and Thomas and Mercer @amazonpublishing for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I snagged this one as a read-now book from NetGalley and am so so glad I did, because this was quite a fun thriller!⁠
The premise was so fascinating to me; a family with a long history of psychopathy meets up for a family reunion. We think of psychopaths as violent murderers, but often they are non-violent, and have traits of being emotionless and manipulative. Marr does a great job of laying this foundation, which means when someone winds up dead you have an entire lineup of people as suspects because you don’t know who is violent vs. non-violent. ⁠
I thought I was so clever and had figured out who our murderer was and what was going on, but nope. The twists at the end definitely surprised me and I couldn’t put this one down, flying through it in just 24 hours. ⁠
Don’t sleep on this one friends, I definitely recommend it!

Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC!

The Family Bones had a really interesting premise but it ultimately fell flat for me. I couldn't get behind or into Olivia from the start, I was with Birdie until the end (not worth risking your life!), and the journal entries oddly written.
Dialogue often felt fake, and there was too much on psychopathy (if I had a dollar for every appearance of that word) that felt borderline like textbook entries.
Too many characters to keep track of. The big reveal gave me nothing and left me confused (see: too many characters).

Again, very cool premise but not a fan of the execution.

I thought the twist was a little telegraphed and that there were a lot of characters to track. Overall, though, I found it a compelling, twisty mystery.

I enjoyed this one. A family, many of them psychopaths, gather for a family reunion in a remote setting, and then one mysteriously dies. The main character’s reliability as a narrator is always in question, as she tries to find out if she has inherited the family trait. There are plenty of twists and turns that lead to a shocking ending that I did not expect. This was a great enjoyable thriller.

What do you get when family of psychopaths attend a reunion in the mountains? Trouble! I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this up. The chapter alternate between Olivia who is a member of the family at the reunion, Birdie a true crime podcaster on a mission, and a mystery person’s diary. I liked the actual psychology theories woven into the story as Olivia is working on her dissertation. There were a lot of characters which I’m not a fan of. I kept having to reread parts to keep who everyone is straight.

Olivia has tried to distance herself from her questionable family. Her family has a haunted history of psychotic behavior going back multiple generations. Despite her roots, she has managed to create a stable, normal life for herself. She’s engaged and working on her dissertation when she receives an invitation to her family reunion.

Simultaneously, Birdie, a true crime podcaster is determined to track down a missing person. These two weave together perfectly as the story continues.

The Family Bones is available March 7, 2023.

Thank you netgalley and thomas&mercer for this arc in exchange for my honest opinion.