Hello, beautiful people, welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into The Family Experiment by John Marrs. I believe this will be my first time reviewing a John Marrs book, and I do think this was the first of his that I have read, but it isn’t the last. I am hoping to be able to review more of his books in the future, but I have to say, after reading The Family Experiment, I was hooked on his writing and have been devouring his books ever since. I find his books are similar (but not at the same time) to Freida McFadden’s work, just super twisty thrillers filled with unexpected turns throughout the whole book. Each book of his has been super enjoyable, so I am excited to dive into this review.
Main Characters:
Woody and Tina: On the show The Family Experiment, are given an AI daughter, Belle, but have some dark secrets hidden in their family home that the rest of the world isn’t seeing
Cadman and Gabriel: Cadman, a social influencer, goes on the show with his partner, and their AI son River divides the couple as they battle with their morals and fame
Dimitri and Zoe: After the loss of their son, Adam takes part in the show to have another chance at parenthood with their AI son Lenny; however, a lot of the past gets brought up again in the experience
Selena and Jaden: Go on the show are quickly villainized due to how they act towards each other and their child, and have many of their dark secrets brought to life
Hudson: Is the only parent on the show who is a single parent, is either loved or hated for being a single father and gets mixed reviews
Rufus and Kitty: The first couple to be kicked off the show after being unable to handle the pressure and scrutiny, leading to an incident
My Review
As mentioned above, I have really been enjoying John Marrs’ work recently, and The Family Experiment is no exception. As you may have noticed, this book has a lot of characters and moving parts, but despite this, I found the book easy to follow along with and enjoy. Given that all of the characters are doing the same thing, just having different experiences, it isn’t tough to keep track of who’s who. I love how his books often have a dystopian theme to them that brings in these really interesting and complex plots that are different from others. The Family Experiment has tons of suspicious and eerie characters, a dynamic plot that pulls you in, and thrills and twists that are hard to see coming along the way. I gave the book an 8.5/10 rating overall.
The Family Experiment follows six families as they take part in a new show that allows them to be judged on their parenting skills and the families they can create. The show provides the prospective parents with an AI child that progresses much faster than a regular child to test them in the differing stages of a child’s life and how they handle it, also sprinkling in different challenges for our parents along the way. If parents do anything deemed “not good parenting” in the eyes of the viewer, they risk being kicked off the show and having their child deleted forever. If you win? You get to keep your child. With a lot of pressure on the line and cameras on them all of the time, our families are forced to try and put their best foot forward to gain the prize. Dimitri and Zoe, on the surface, seem like a regular couple working to have a family again after the loss of their son. Hudson is an interesting contestant, the only single parent on the show, questions of his ability to be a good parent to his AI daughter pressure him to try and present himself in the best light. Cadman and Gabriel, the only gay couple, also have fame to start having a successful internet presence, and questions about whether they can maintain their lives come into play. Woody and Tina work to be the best parents possible in the hopes of keeping the secrets they have hidden. Selena and Jaden learn that having the eyes of the world on them may add more pressure to their relationship rather than less. With all of our families desperate to hide their dark secrets and win the hearts of the public, the pressure proves to be far too much for many of them. The question is, who will win in the end?
Going into The Family Experiment, I wasn’t totally sure how things were going to play out. The concept of a reality show where families are gifted (and potentially stripped of) AI children based on public perception is an eerie one. The whole “parenting for votes” thing feels just a little too close to home in today’s influencer-obsessed world. Even though the kids are virtual, the emotional stakes are disturbingly real. It’s a brilliant and deeply unsettling concept.
I figured secrets about the contestants would play a role in the drama, but I definitely didn’t anticipate just how many twists and turns this book would throw at me. Marrs wastes no time either, the story kicks off with a bang when one of the families is booted off the show early on for doing something downright disturbing to their fake child. That moment really sets the tone and immediately made me wonder, are any of these people actually good parents? I mean, it’s reality TV. It’s like a dating show; they don’t cast people who are likely to walk away happily ever after. They cast chaos. So I started watching (reading) all of these parents with suspicion. But the wild part is, many of them genuinely do love their AI kids. That tension, between real love and artificial children, between authenticity and performance, is what makes this story so fascinating. The lines between right and wrong, fake and real, blur fast.
While each contestant’s family gets solid page time, Dimitri and Zoe’s storyline is probably the central one, and for good reason. They’re positioned early on as sympathetic, a couple who tragically lost their real son and are now trying to “do it right” with their virtual child, Lenny. Because they’ve experienced parenthood and loss, you assume they’re going to be the most grounded, maybe even the most deserving of this second chance. But the more we learn, the more twisted and heartbreaking their past becomes. I didn’t see half of their arc coming, and the reveals were so well executed. It becomes clear that their trauma runs deeper than they let on, and that they’re running from guilt just as much as they’re chasing redemption.
Hudson’s storyline also stood out to me. He’s the show’s only single parent and is treated like a bit of a wildcard at first; people doubt he can raise a daughter on his own. But he quickly becomes the fan favourite, the underdog that people rally around. His emotional vulnerability and strength shine through, and I found myself rooting for him even more once we started to peel back the layers of his backstory. Just like Dimitri and Zoe, his past holds secrets, but his motivations felt really grounded and powerful. Again, I didn’t expect the twist with him and Adam at all, but it gave his storyline even more weight.
Other families brought their own flair, too. Cadman and Gabriel had that influencer dynamic that felt way too familiar. Cadman is more concerned with views and followers than actual parenting, while Gabriel is clearly drowning in the background. Their scenes often made me cringe, which I think was the point. Selena and Jaden had one of the more quietly devastating arcs. There’s this underlying tension in their relationship from the start, and it just continues to unravel under the pressure of constant judgment. You get the sense that they came into this trying to save their marriage and ended up ripping it even further apart. And then, of course, there are the moments where you realize, maybe this show was never really about good parenting at all. Maybe it’s just a spectacle, a platform for people to project their own beliefs about morality, family, and forgiveness, all while staring at a screen.
I really appreciated how no two families felt alike. They all came in with the same goal, to win, but they brought totally different baggage. It felt reflective of how families are in real life. The only difference is that most of us don’t have cameras in our faces 24/7, recording every mistake and broadcasting it to a judging audience. Actually, with the way family content and child influencers are exploding online, maybe that’s not even true anymore. Marrs clearly tapped into something very current: the way we perform parenting, the way we watch others do it, and the consequences of turning something so deeply personal into public entertainment.
Each family tried to keep up the illusion of perfection, but none of them could outrun their pasts or their demons. That was one of the most compelling aspects for me: how the characters unravel in their own way, at their own pace, even as they try so hard to hold it together for the cameras.
*** Don’t read any further if you don’t want to read any spoilers ***
Throughout the book, it quickly becomes clear that one of our contestants has a different motivation from the others.
Quickly becoming a fan favourite with his charming ways, Hudson can move well throughout the show. His motivation, however, is to never win the contest but to expose Awakening Entertainment, the company producing the show. His desire to expose the company is also connected to another couple of contestants.
Dimitri and Zoe win over sympathy from the public, being a couple who had lost their child, Adam. It’s presented that Adam was kidnapped many years ago, and they were never able to find him. However, this is not the truth. In the world they are living in, money is tight and hard to get. Dimitri, desperate for money, makes a spine-chilling choice. Many companies are looking to purchase children (maybe to turn them into AI for these shows?), and Dimitri, without telling Zoe, sells Adam. Then creates the story of him being kidnapped. It’s presented that Zoe originally believed him but started to suspect something different as time went on, but never did anything.
Hudson, as a child, met a similar fate to Adam, except he was able to make it out alive. How? He was saved by a boy who was with him, allowing him to escape, a boy whom he suspects to be Adam, Dimitri and Zoe’s child. The boy who saved him is now living in a different country, under a different name, but Hudson thought he had died trying to save him.
Hudson exposes the media company and what they do to children, also exposing Dimitri and Zoe. The book ends with the company going to ruin, and Hudson being seen as a martyr for change, although that wasn’t his intention; he just wanted revenge.
Oh, and also it’s exposed that Woody and Tina had been keeping their real daughter locked up and hidden from the world, to hide their shame from being seen as bad parents for creating a murderer.
So, overall a lot of twists and turns that I did not see coming. I did think for a little bit that maybe Hudson was Adam, but I was glad to be wrong about that and be surprised by the twist.
I hope you enjoyed this review. Thank you for checking it out! Feel free to subscribe to the page to be one of the first to know when I release a new review.
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