One of the Family by Mark Edwards - Thriller Book Review

This was such a gripping, addictive read with creepy vibes!

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Patrick has travelled to a remote part of Scotland with his girlfriend of 9 months to meet her family for the first time, on a trip where the rest of the family will also be meeting their dad’s new girlfriend for the first time too. The stakes are already high when the siblings immediately start arguing, but not in a fun sibling rivalry kind of way. Then their father (a tech mogul) and his girlfriend arrive, and she turns out to be the same age as them and also the spitting image of their mother at the age she died from cancer. Patrick quickly realises he’s caught up in a family of snakes, all sniping at one another, and things start to get really dangerous.

This book was such a creepy mood read for a thriller! “Are you scared?” was a brilliant opening line. Even though it’s asked of the character, with no other context, you as the reader feel as though you’re being asked…with the undertone being that you should be. And I was. It really set the tone for a deeply unsettling, claustrophobic narrative that I genuinely couldn’t put down – I read it in one sitting.

The pacing was very good. You start off feeling unsettled and that feeling creeps up on you. Each chapter throws more mystery and more drama at you, and the complex characters are constantly adding to that. Some were distinctly unlikeable, and others had you on your toes all the time. When you’ve read a few psychological thrillers, you start to get a feeling for who’s going to be the bad guy, but this one had me second guessing constantly – and I love that. It was unpredictable in the best way, although it did all get very chaotic as it came together at the end and I had to keep my wits about me while reading to make sure I was understanding all the different strings of story coming together!

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The only negative to the book was that I didn’t click all that well with Patrick, whose perspective the majority of the book was told from. His character seemed a bit flat at times, more of an observer than getting really involved in what was going on around him. To be fair, it was a totally weird environment right from the beginning so in his shoes, I would have sat back and watched it play around me, but I felt like there might be more of a reveal that he was potentially holding back something which didn’t come. I think I just wanted more insight from him into the fact that everything going on around him was really quite strange.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for an ARC of this book.