4.8⭐️🎧
Page turner!!! My 2nd John Marrs, and just like his novels “The One” and “The Marriage Act,” it’s set in the same (somewhat) futurist world with lots of thought-provoking situations about the potential benefits and horrific sides of AI.

🌎 In this universe, not only can you find your perfect match through DNA testing, but if for any reason you are unable to have a child, you can now design and raise your own virtual AI baby, complete with sound/smell to tap into your senses, and upgrade packages for things like their level of education, and such. (Because let’s be real, this is just another way for “The Corporation” to profit on people’s vulnerabilities.)

🎥 The Family Experiment is a reality game show that launches the AI baby offering into the world with a contest. Multiple couples, and one single Father sign-up to compete, and raise an AI child for 9 months (from infancy to teen) while being scrutinized from the public eye on real-time video. At the end the winner must choose whether to keep their virtual child, that they’ve raised and bonded with, or to vanish to child into virtual air, and take a cash payout instead.

🎯 John nails every aspect of human behavior in this book. Fans obsessing over the live feed and losing sleep, social media feeding into the gossip and their opinions on how other’s are raising their virtual children, competitors doing what it takes to win, the difficulties of being a reality personality, and all the aspects of how AI effects people’s lives (everything from career and education to moral topics like how to police and handle neglect, murder, etc. in the AI world - because it’s not real…right?)

🧠 This book leaves me with SO many thoughts and questions. Like, should we start training our youth now, to go into a field of Virtual Law?

📰 I like how he sprinkles in news headlines, social media conversations, and the like, to incorporate the public's reactions to everything happening in the experiment. It’s so realistic, and comes through really well in the audio book with news background music and such.

A huge thanks to NetGalley, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and John Marrs for providing me with a complimentary ARC to review. This was a fun read!

This was so interesting, and different than any other book I’ve read. I couldn’t imagine going through an experiment like this knowing at the end I could lose everything

I'm so disappointed that I did not enjoy this. I even contemplated not finishing because I didn't really care for any of the characters and I wasn't hooked like I usually am with Marrs' other books.

Another five-star read from John Marrs! I really enjoy how he blends the sci-fi and thriller genres. I thought this book was a really interesting and unique concept. I felt that the characters were well developed and dynamic.

This book really made me think because its so complex and has really interesting concepts and societal implications.

This was my first book that I have read my John Marrs. It was difficult to get intro at first but a few chapters in it was easy to follow along. There was a lot of characters in this book to keep up with which I wasn’t a huge fan of. I think the idea of making it a tv show and having the “real world” citizens judge the parenting was a smart idea. I didn’t realize that there was 2 other books about this universe but I’m very interested to read those as well. I give this book 3 stars and I recommend if you are into a sci-fi world building book this is the one for you.

The Family Experiment is a sci/fi thriller novel that takes place in a near-distant future UK, where there is overpopulation, overcrowding, and an economic crisis. It follows multiple points of view of parents taking part in a competition to raise an artificially intelligent child for the chance to have the family they weren’t able to before.

I think this was a well-crafted novel with a lot of exciting twists and turns. The concept was super unique, and the ending twist was a nice touch. My favorite part about this book was how complex each character was. No one character was good or bad, and it takes a good writer to make you care about morally grey characters with dubious goals, not to mention several. It was really cool to see the different forms a family took and how love can be both a blessing and a curse.

Overall, this is among my favorites of Marrs’ books so far. I think the book accomplished what it set out to and held considerable intrigue throughout to keep the reader guessing. I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoys sci-fi thrillers with a societal message and complex points of view.

There should be a warning on this book about the sensitive nature. I thought the premise sounded really interesting but when the book opens with infanticide, whether real or virtual, it can be triggering and difficult for people to push past.

This book was amazing. Amazingly scary. Thinking about what AI will look like in the future and how we will get there. All the couples are a hot mess and it was fun to see what their secrets were and unravel what was happening with them. I thought I knew the twist but that was too obvious for John Marrs! He led me there only to switch it up. It was a great read and referenced two other of his books I haven’t read yet - the marriage act and the passengers. Now I must read them too.

I absolutely loved the concept of this book.
Unfortunately it’s moving really slow.
It’s taken me weeks to get 50% through the book.
I’m disappointed as this is my first John Marrs book.

As the population grows and cities become over-crowded, families are trying to make ends meet with less income than ever before. Despite initiatives such as the Marriage Act designed to support couples starting families, many can no longer afford it.

A company called Awakening Entertainment promises to provide parents the technology to order MetaBabies—children that exist entirely in the metaverse but who grow up and interact like real children. Parents can choose the age, sex, appearance, interests, and the speed of their growth.

With pre-orders opening, the company is launching a reality TV show called The Family Experiment. The show follows several carefully selected couples over the course of nine months as they raise their MetaBaby. Parents will wear virtual reality headsets and full-body suits that allow them to interact with their child the way biological parents can.

Viewers will be able to watch the parents and their MetaBaby 24/7 as the child progresses from infancy to adulthood over nine months nine months. There will be votes throughout the show that allow viewers to influence the game and eventually select a winner. The winning couple can choose to keep their MetaBaby and whatever stipend they have left over from the experiment, or to permanently delete their child from the metaverse and take cash to start a real world family of their own (dispersed only on the day of the live birth of their real world child). Losers will have their MetaBaby permanently deleted.

Things become tense as couples navigate parenting in the metaverse while trying to appeal to viewers to favor them in votes. And in this experiment, no one will escape without something being exposed…

What did I think?
I love John Marrs’ books, and particularly his speculative fiction books. Starting with The One, Marrs explores a not-so-distant future where technology advancements and government oversight lead to innovations that seem great but ultimately blow back on the people who are trying to make it work. From discovering genetic matches to autonomous self-driving vehicles to government oversight of marriages—this is a terrifying world!

The Family Experiment has nods to the other worlds, but it reads as a standalone story with mostly new characters (a few minorly appeared in other books, but it won’t spoil anything reading out of order). The book centers around the development of metachildren—kids that live entirely in the metaverse but allow parents who either can’t afford kids of their own, struggle with fertility, or people who are otherwise looking to experience being a parent an opportunity to try it. Sounds amazing, right?

Well…maybe not so much. It turns out that it isn’t quite the same as having a real child. The parents spend so much time in the metaverse that they are losing touch with things they need to take care of in their actual lives. The laws that govern each world are different. What is the implication if someone takes the life of another in the metaverse and that metahuman was designed to think, feel, and experience the world like a real person? When people get to design a child exactly as they want, how will they handle it when the child turns out to be imperfect, just as human children are? Complicated, to say the least!

There are greater implications as well—some politicians and investors advocate as this being a way for minor-attracted individuals (pedophiles…) to be able to explore those urges in the metaverse instead of the real world. Yikes! What will happen when they decide to take that behavior to the real world with greater experience? And as with many of the other books, there is the implication that the government will not have full oversight of how people parent because they can go anywhere in the metaverse and craft whatever laws they want to. Many things in this book (and Marrs’ broader world he has built) center around the notion that technology can be great until it nudges over a very thin line with dire consequences, and that it also breaks down the few privacy barriers people have left.

One major storyline centers around a man named Hudson, who is participating in The Family Experiment in the present as a single dad, but whose story is largely told in the past twelve years earlier. Hudson awakens on a boat with no memory of who he is or what his past was. He learns that parents who can’t afford their bills hand their children over in exchange for having their debts wiped. Some of them wipe their child’s memory first, in an ineffective display of mercy. Hudson and the kids go to a facility that they call Ararat where real kids are helping to train AI on how to create metachildren that look, think, feel, and experience emotions like real kids. If that isn’t dark enough, imagine how dark it could get!

The contestants all have interesting stories and roles that all tie together in different ways. Hudson’s chapters are the most compelling to me, but also the most disturbing. The idea that parents traffic their children (and while they pretend they are sending their kid to a better life, they must realize how absurd that belief is) to have their debts paid off is upsetting, but not implausible. The metachildren being trained by real children adds confusion to how we should feel about the metababy program. What does it mean if an AI child is subjected to abuse as the politicians suggest, but that child was developed to feel the way a real child does? Kind of gross, right?

(I recommend reading the physical/digital copy instead of the audiobook because of all the different mixed media types presented.)

What a cool premise for a book - the future of parenthood in the Metaverse! I liked this book (hence the 3.5 star rating), but there were a few reasons why I didn't truly "love" it. Let's start with a few of the reasons why I liked it:
- parental humor (baby poop = poonami)
- futuristic concepts
- social media involvement
- very similar to Black Mirror (from Netflix)

Here are a few reasons that kept me from the "love" mark:
- lots of different family situations and kind of all at once
- very mixed media (chat boards, newspaper headings, online forums, regular chapters)
- lots of dots to connect for overall understanding

Thank you, NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing, for a chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Another fun one from John Marrs! If you liked with the Passengers or The One then this will be right up your alley. This takes place in the same futuristic universe with the self-driving cars and the DNA Match process. This book follows the ability for children to be raised fully in the Metaverse, but the process is turned into a reality show with deadly implications. In addition to being fun and fast paced as ever, the questions about family morality and real versus not real lead to deep ponderances.

My main critique was the near constant call backs to the previous novels in this universe. I wanted this to stand alone from the others more.

Read if you like dark themes, short chapters, multi POV, or Black Mirror.

I don’t understand how John Marrs comes up with these wild concepts and makes them into such captivating, addictive stories. I loved the Marriage Act, his previous speculative fiction novel, and it was so fun seeing different characters or mentions of it in this one! The alternating POVs were so perfect and brought the characters to life as we tried to uncover all their secrets. The reality tv show aspect was done so perfectly, nailing the drama! I love how this book makes you question so many things and think how you would react in certain situations! I can’t wait to work my way through Marrs’ backlist and into some of his psychological thrillers!

The Family Experiment by John Marrs

* Thank you to @netgalley and @harlequintradrpublishing for providing an ebook in exchange of a honest review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (more like 4,5 ⭐️)

John Marrs did it again! What a pleasure to be back in the same universe as The One. The concept was truly amazing and I would have take more pages from every point of view honestly. I need to get my hands soon on The Passengers and The Marriage Act.

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John Marrs's The Family Experiment takes us on a wild ride through the intersection of family, technology, and societal pressure. This gripping speculative thriller blends the allure of virtual reality with the deep-seated human desire for parenthood. As economic struggles and overpopulation become ever more pressing, Marrs offers a chilling, thought-provoking take on what families might look like in the future. With sharp writing and unexpected twists, it's a story that keeps you hooked and makes you question what truly defines a family. If you enjoy dark, imaginative tales, this one's definitely worth a read.

This whole concept and how it played out had me so hooked! Virtual children and a reality tv show - shockingly I can see how this could become reality. How John Marrs comes out with his ideas for hos speculative thrillers I don't know but am so happy he does. This is a rollercoaster ride and kept me reading many late night till the end. Well recommended and would be a great tv series too.

This was my first John Marrs novel and wow was I missing out! Like an episode of black mirror this sci-fi thriller truly shocked me. The story was well paced and the short chapters made it a compulsive read for me. I think this would be a great option for a book club due to the ethical dilemma. I will be picking up another book by John Marrs very soon!

This is one of favorite John Marrs books so far I finished in one day nothing is as it seems great book

I feel honored to have been chosen to read this book. It was incredible! I want to take a dive into John Marrs’ brain a see what’s going on in that head of his. This is only my 2nd book by him and it will not be my last. Fast paced and engaging! Just when you think the book reached its limits there is always more! You are a genius John Marrs!

I love John Marrs! This book was great. Not your typical thriller, which I liked. It was medium paced. Not a slow burn but just enough suspense to keep the pages turning quickly. The end was spectacular and in true John Marrs style, there was quite a bit a mind bending.

I thought as a thriller, The Family Experiment, also touched on important topics regarding AI and our future. Told in multiple points of view and showcases several couples hoping to participate in a family experiment. Deep in a metaverse that only exists in VR, these couples compete in parenting. Each child is AI as well and the winner of the show gets to keep their child AI or take a sizable sum of money.

John Marrs never disappoints! I'm a big fan of his variable timelines and multiple narrators. I also think JM does a great job tying his stories together, he weaves small details
In to the story in such a way that if you're not paying attention you might miss it. I enjoy this technique and always feel accomplished for catching them. Can't wait to read more JM