Review: 'The Family Bones' by Elle Marr

I have been on an absolute mental health-reading bender, with a good mix of fiction and non-fiction. One of those reads was The Family Bones, which, as a thriller, gave me a bit of a scenery-change from the heart-breaking non-fiction accounts I had been reading. It was definitely a thrilling ride! Thanks to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 3/0/2023
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Psychology student Olivia Eriksen’s family is notorious among true-crime buffs. Faced with a legacy of psychopathy that spans generations, Olivia has spent much of her academic life trying to answer one chilling question: Nature or nurture?

Although she’s kept a safe distance from her blood relatives for years, Olivia agrees to attend a weekend reunion. After all, her fiancé is eager to meet his future in-laws, and the gathering may give her a chance to interview her elusive grandfather about the family traits.

But nothing is ever peaceful among the Eriksens for long. Olivia’s favorite cousin is found dead in a nearby lake. Then another family member disappears. As a violent storm isolates the group further, Olivia’s fears rise faster than the river.

And an uninvited guest is about to join the party. True-crime podcaster Birdie Tan has uncovered a disturbing mystery in her latest investigation—and she’s following it right to the Eriksens’ mountain resort. There’s a deadly twist in the family plot that even Olivia doesn’t see coming.

I think I first became aware of the nature vs. nurture debate in my last year of high school, when it came up during both  my English Literature and in my Religious Education/Ethics classes. I was intrigued straight away and see-sawed between the different sides frequently. Reading We Need To Talk About Kevin for English Lit made me unsure in a way I both enjoyed and was a little frightened off. What if a kid could be born "wrong", would that be worse or better than a parent having somehow "messed up" their raising of the child? In Ethics we discussed various philosophies over the Nature of Man (a very lofty topic for 17-yr olds) and the idea that at birth we are a tabula rasa, an empty slate upon which society then draws a personality, really took a hold. When I think about it, these ideas have had a strong impact on how I view societal issues nowadays. I have become highly aware of the way life is skewed from the start, how the place into which you are born defines much of your life. I had the "luck", I guess, to be born into a highly-educated, middle-class, white family in Europe and many of the opportunities I have had in life were made possible by this origin. Being born female, however, also restricted my life in certain ways. Now add a parental divorce and some familial acrimony, and things become a little muddled. How much of my behaviour is caused by how I was raised and the things that happened during my childhood, and how much of it is just my nature? If there was an easy answer to this question, it wouldn't still be such a hot topic. But now imagine that, like Olivia, you know there is a psychopathic trait running through your family. How can you be sure in your own identity with such a proverbial sword of Damocles hanging over your head?

Olivia has 6 weeks to finish her doctoral thesis, which is a mess currently. She wants to figure out if psychopathy starts at birth, if it is truly all nature. The question is not a purely academical one, because Olivia is an Eriksen, and the Eriksen's have had many psychopaths across the last few generations. Edging closer to 23, the age at which her family's "twitch" tends to show, Olivia feels on the edge of something. When an invite to a family retreat arrives, it is at once the perfect opportunity to finish her research and a dangerous path into the dark. With her fiance Howard at her side, Olivia braves the family retreat, which descends into chaos almost immediately. As the tension ratchets up and as conflicting and combative personalities come to the fore, Olivia has to ask herself if it is her or her family who are losing it. Alongside Olivia's narrative, we also get to know Birdie, a young mother who hosts a True Crime podcast about forgotten minority victims. After a mysterious email, Birdie is on the hunt for a missing woman whose disappearance may or may not be linked to the Eriksens. Add to this mysterious diary entries and you have yourself a pressure cooker of a novel. Olivia was an intriguing main character, even as she gets herself further and further into deep water. The novel is something of a coming-of-age, finding out who you are, experience for her and I definitely enjoyed being along for the ride. The other characters are not quite as worked out as I maybe would have liked, but in a way this makes sense due to Olivia's own blinkered approach. 

This was my first novel by Elle Marr but I was intrigued almost immediately by the blurb. I really enjoyed Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian, which is a thriller told from the point of view of a psychopath. Admittedly, my recent non-fiction reading on serious mental illnesses, schizophrenia specifically, made me a little more hesitant to dive into a fictional novel which relied on mental health themes. It is too easy to sensationalise these issues and paints everyone with a criminal brush, or make people seem "insane" or "crazy" without diving deeper. What I enjoyed about The Family Bones, however, is that since the nature vs. nurture debate is at the heart of it, it definitely tries to be quite nuanced in its portrayals. While it definitely gets more thriller-y towards the end, and therefore also includes more shocks and twists since the tension needs to be ramped up, the build-up of the novel spends enough time to make the reader aware they need to be a little critical of what they see and not jump to conclusions. I enjoyed the way the three different narratives, Olivia's, Birdie's and the diary's, come together and interact, and there definitely were some surprises. Marr's writing also flows very smoothly and the way in which she builds tension, moves between different narrators, and creates a scene, were all very enjoyable. I will definitely be reading further thrillers by Elle Marr!

I give this novel...

3 Universes!

I very much enjoyed reading Elle Marr's The Family Bones. It does exactly what you'd hope from a thriller, which is keep you intrigued till the end, but also makes sure to handle its subject material relatively sensitively.