Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into a new favourite author of mine, John Marrs, spine-tingling book, Keep It in the Family. I’ve been eating up his books like crazy recently and love the eerie, unsettling worlds he creates. I really enjoyed Keep It in the Family and would definitely recommend checking it out if you enjoy thrillers and mysteries.
Main Characters:
Mia Hunter: A young woman excited to take a new step with her love in buying a fixer-upper to start their family in, soon Mia and her husband Finn discover their new home may have many hidden secrets in its bones
Finn Hunter: Mia’s husband, who on the surface seems supportive and loving, but may have just as many secrets as their new house
Debbie Hunter: Finn’s mother, who gives off the vibe of being a sweet lady, but has lots of skeletons in her closet that she wants to keep away
My Review
As mentioned before, I’ve recently gotten into a lot of John Marrs’ work and am really enjoying his different stories. While Keep It in the Family wasn’t my favourite out of all of his books I’ve read, it was still a really enjoyable twisty book. Some thrillers make you look over your shoulder, and then there’s what John Marrs does in Keep It in the Family, where every horror, every secret, and every warped loyalty makes you question humanity itself. This isn’t just a domestic mystery about a creepy house; it’s a tangled, unhinged psychological exploration of family, identity, trauma, and the lengths people go to protect, or destroy, those they love. From the first unnerving scrawl scratched into a floorboard to the final bone-chilling twist, Keep It in the Family is Marrs at his darkest, most disturbing, and most emotionally jarring. I did find that the twists in this one were a bit more noticeable than some of his others, but there was still a lot of mystery to be had in this one. I struggled a little bit with how to rate it, but landed on an 8/10 rating. I think what made this one a bit different then his others is a smaller cast of characters. Lots of his other books have a lot of characters to work with, and it often makes it harder to tell who has done what, or who is the biggest villain out of the group. With a smaller crew, it was a bit easier to pull out who was the problem, but the ways that they are the problem definitely stay twisty throughout.
Keep It in the Family follows Mia and Finn Hunter as they take the next big step in their relationship and buy an old family home to fix up together for their future. When Mia finds out she is pregnant and the two start preparations for their child, something frightening is found hidden under the floorboards. A message talking about saving them from the attic. Who needs to be saved? And who wrote this message? Their once dream home now turns into a house of horrors as the past is brought into the present, and the secrets hidden in the walls are forced to come out.
Mia is the heart of the book. A woman recovering from trauma, grappling with postpartum fear, and driven by a desperate need to understand the darkness she’s uncovered in what she thought would be something amazing. When things start to happen in the house, and more is put at risk for those she loves, Mia’s anxiety with the history of the house spikes, and her need for answers becomes all-consuming. She is a compelling narrator who is sharp and insightful. Her desire to find the truth and question everything and everyone makes her easy to root for as we go through the book. She isn’t perfect, and can be reckless, and over the top, but it’s what makes her a very real character. Mia also very much fits in with her and Finn’s newborn, a character in the book who never asked to deal with this madness but is stuck in it as much as everyone else. Their baby often reminds the reader of the gravity of the situation that Mia is dealing with, and that it’s not just herself she needs to protect. He creates this level of fear and paranoia in Mia that every parent can understand.
Then there is Finn. At first, Finn seems like the supportive husband, practical, protective, and steadily involved in the renovations. But as the story unfolds, we learn he’s been hiding huge parts of his life, parts that could blow up everything he has created, and deeper, darker connections to his childhood than he ever let on. His arc is one of the most unsettling in the book: betrayed by those he thought he knew, dragged into horrors he barely understands, and ultimately reshaped by family trauma in ways that make you wonder if he ever was good. The truth about who Finn really is becomes one of the novel’s most disturbing revelations. But don’t think that I just gave you the answers to the story, because just knowing that he is untrustworthy does not even dip a toe into the craziness that is exposed in this home. As we learn more about his family as well, we see that he is not even close from the most unsettling character in this book.
The attic in the book is very much a symbol for how we can never outrun the past, and it will eventually show its ugly head one way or another. The more we try to ignore it, the more it will try to destroy us. Mia’s descent into madness makes it difficult for the reader to know if what she is seeing and dealing with is real. It fuels the tension in the book because while on the surface she seems the most reliable, it’s not easy to tell at all. Every major character is hiding something, whether it’s guilt, betrayal, or a history that’s too terrible to face. It’s not just about what they did, but what they allowed.
Keep It in the Family forces you to confront the gnawing idea that family, the thing meant to protect us, can also be the source of our deepest nightmares. The conclusion is bleak and unforgettable: some secrets are too twisted to be forgiven, and the legacy of violence doesn’t cleanly disappear with time. Instead, it reshapes the present, forcing Mia and Finn to rebuild not just their home, but their understanding of who they are, what they were raised to believe, and what they are willing to protect. It’s one of those endings that leaves you unsettled, thinking about it long after the last page, and that’s precisely why it lands at an 8/10 rather than a flat good. It’s powerful, not just shocking.
Keep It in the Family is a twisted, deeply psychological thriller that marries dark family drama with true horror. John Marrs excels at taking the familiar, family, home, and love, and showing you how corrupted it can become under the right (or wrong) pressures. It’s a story that will get under your skin, make you question every motive, and force you to reckon with the idea that betrayal can wear a loving face.
*** Don’t go any further if you don’t want to read any spoilers ***
Mia finally uncovers the full horror hidden in the attic and walls of the house.
Over many years, Debbie Hunter (Finn’s mother) imprisoned vulnerable women in the attic under the delusion that she was saving them. These women were abused, neglected, and ultimately murdered when Debbie decided they were beyond saving. Their remains were hidden within the structure of the house, literally built into it. The chilling truth is that this wasn’t a one-off crime. It was systematic, repeated, and intentional.
Debbie genuinely sees herself as this saviour who has done nothing wrong. She changes the past to fit this warped sense of self that she has. Even when confronted with evidence, she denies the past. Finn’s father knew what was going on but just ignored it rather than dealing with the horrors of what his wife was doing. He isn’t a killer, but if he weren’t so passive, it probably wouldn’t have gone on as long as it did.
Finn has to come to terms with his entire childhood being a lie. The people he was raised by were a lie. Again, like his father, he isn’t directly involved in any of the murders, but he benefited from them like everyone else in his family.
The ending is kind of bleak; there is no real satisfying ending. Finn and Mia’s marriage is damaged forever, Finn’s mother goes to jail, and his father is left to deal with everything he ignored for all of those years. If the secrets were kept in the family, then everyone would have gone on living in this fantasy.
One of the only things that tripped me up about the ending was Finn’s prior connection to the house. I was under the impression that he and Mia just stumbled on this house randomly, so it’s strange that this house would just happen to be the one that held all of his family’s dark secrets. And also that he wouldn’t remember growing up in the house. Maybe all of this was explained, and I’ve just forgotten it, but I can’t recall an early link between him and his family’s connection to this house. I think there was something like that; his parents discouraged them from buying the house, but I just can’t totally remember. I would love to hear what others thought about that, and the book as a whole.
Thank you for checking out this review. I hope you enjoyed! 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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