Bad to the Bone.......

It happens. Do the building blocks that constructed you have a far-reaching source from generations past? Or are you just a product of your panoramic life view and experiences? The Eriksen family just may be marinating in a giant open petri dish.

Now as we are settling into this one, keep in mind that Elle Marr has taken on a monumental excursion into the occurences of ASPD (Anti-Social Personality Disorder) within a family unit. We'll be hobnobbin' with psychopaths strapped with a backpack of multiple social disorders. You'll need a scorecard to keep track of all the in-laws and outlaws.

Olivia Eriksen is a twenty-three year old grad student organizing her thesis on cognitive disorders. But she needs primary sources and is desiring to interview her grandfather, Edgar. Lo and behold she's just received an invitation to the Eriksen family reunion in Oregon at her uncle's lodge. She's newly engaged to Howard who will be accompanying her to announce their wedding plans to these delightful souls. Divin' right in, Norman.

Let's just say that the Eriksen family has more wingnuts than the bolts on a B-52 bomber. Each has their own backstory and level of concern. And the first night alone will bring a cousin face down dead by the pier. Oh, and we've just begun. A treacherous storm arrives with dangerous rock slides. No police. No rescue coming. The body count will rise moment by moment. And Olivia and Howard are in the midst of all this......

Elle Marr had a very creative idea for The Family Bones. However, the number of characters is mindboggling and difficult to keep track of. In addition, Marr divides this storyline into three sections with three unreliable voices. My favorite character was Birdie, the podcaster, who seemed to fizzle toward the end. I could have sat through a solo book on Birdie. You'll not care for any of the other tons of characters. Far too much heavy lifting here with a far too predictable ending.

You must experience this one for yourself. And listen for the rattlin' of those bones.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Thomas & Mercer and to Elle Marr for the opportunity.

I tried really hard to get into this book. It is very slow to start and there is not anything that particularly grabbed my attention. The book sounded like it was going to be really interesting and I really wanted to like the book. After reading halfway through, I just could not go any further. There were too many characters to keep track of too, which made it extremely difficult to remember who was who.

This certainly was an interesting book. It’s told in alternating viewpoints between Olivia (a graduate student) and Birdie (a true crime podcaster). There are also journal entries from a unknown source (until the end).

It revolves around a family of psychopaths and a missing woman. I don’t want to get too into the book and say any spoilers, but I will say while it was an interesting take on psychopathy, the end was predictable. It did get me turning pages about 40% in to see the pieces come together.

I did like the author’s style and I thought it was an ambitious undertaking. I’d read another book by this author.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Interesting behavioral science, and a good mystery. I liked Birdie’s chapters the best but all POVs were interesting and I liked how things were revealed and came together

Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercerfor the copy of The Family Bones. This had an intriguing storyline and I was excited to read it. The beginning was promising because Olivia is an interesting character. Then we have other narrators/news reports/diary entries that didn’t really seem to relate to Olivia or her family. This threw me off until it all started to come together near the end, but by then my interest had started to wane. I know Olivia was writing her dissertation on psychopathy, but the constant references to how her family exhibited it and at what ages got tiresome. If we had seen it displayed I would have liked it more. There were so many characters the only ones I could really get invested in were Olivia and Howard. The last part of the book was great and I really enjoyed the action. It really made me wish I had gotten to know the other characters better. I also wish the two narratives and the journal entries had been tied together in a loose way earlier. The end was great and now I want to read the book again now I know what to pay attention to! 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Overall a pretty good book. It felt a little slow to start, but really came together at the end. As a fan of psychological fiction, tying in psychology study was really neat! I will definitely be checking out mor books by this author.

Olivia Eriksen is at a family retreat. She has been keeping herself away from her family, but is doing a paper on psychopaths, and needs imput from her Grandfather.
She and her fiance also want to announce their engagement, but she wants to first tell her Grandfather that she is engaged.
Her favourite cousin is found dead, and they are stranded after a storm, no one can get into the resort, and no one can get out.
Another family member disappears and is found by Olivia with her throat cut, and it seems as though someone is trying to pin the murders on Olivia as she was the last person to speak to the cousins.
A true Crime podcaster, Birdie Tan is investigating the disappearance of a woman who has close ties to the Eriksen family, and she arrives at the resort.


I have to be honest, I battled to get into this book. It seems to be very dry and uninteresting, the many, many characters have no depth, they are mentioned, and some of their past is mentioned, but they do not take shape as real people, in my opinion. They are just characters on my Kindle screen.
I did not feel the need to 'just read one more chapter', it was easy to put down. I could not lose myself in the lives of these one dimensional people. I could not feel any emotions. Yes they are psychopaths, but the reader has to feel emotions, and be engrossed in the story being told.
I felt none of that.
Some authors really have the knack of holding the reader's attention. I don't know if it was the subject matter here, Olivia and her family having a psychopathic streak which seems to be genetic, and I did not feel any terror or fear when one of the cousins ran amok in the resort, and the rest had to hide from him. It was basically dry words on the page.
I do apologise for being so blunt, but I did promise an honest review in exchange for receiving the book.

A weekend long reunion for a family of psychopaths. What could go wrong?

The Family Bones is a twist filled mystery with two alternating storylines and points-of-view. One story follows Olivia, a graduate student, and the other Birdie, a true crime podcaster who focuses on unsolved cases involving minorites. We're also given journal entries and news articles sprinkled in between the chapters. They tell the story of a mystery woman as well as provide additional information about Olivia's psychopathic family.

Olivia is a graduate student working on her psychology dissertation. She decides to join her family's reunion trip at an Oregon resort in order to do some first hand research into her family's generations long history of paychopathy. Olivia believes those attending are from the harmless branch of the family tree, but that belief is quickly proven false when the first death occurs.

The plot synopis appealed to me right away and sounded like a fresh take on the familiar family-gathering-at-a-secluded-location setup. Sadly, I didn't connect with this story as much as I'd hoped I would.

My biggest issue with the story was the frequent psychopathy info dumps. Almost every time a character is mentioned the reader is reminded of their specific psychopathy symptoms and behaviors. This kept them from moving beyond their diagnosis and becoming fully fleshed out and believable. I wish we could have seen a least a couple of the characters portrayed in a more complex way so I could have felt some connection and understanding for them. There were a lot of family members to keep straight and this focus on medical details more than distinctive personality details made it difficult to keep everyone straight. We're given a family tree at the beginning of the book and I found myself frequently consulting it.

Overall, this was a fast read that ended up being a disappointment for me. I think readers who can focus more on the whodunit mystery and less on the repetition and rather shallow characters will enjoy the story more than I was able to.

Thank you to Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer for providing a copy for me to read and review.

A good mystery with a different twist - the main character has a psychopathic relative, and she is trying to understand what makes them act as they do...I don't want to ruin any more, you'll have to see for yourself, but this was a really good novel that kept me glued to my seat. I hope this becomes a Netflix miniseries, but it would make a great one!

It took me a little while to get through The Family Bones. There was a lot of technical descriptions of psychopathology as well as numerous characters to keep track of. I also read it on an e-reader, which is always non-preferred for me, as I can't always flip back and forth as readily.

Keeping that in mind, it was an enjoyable read. The storyline was unique, as were the characters and Elle Marr wove humor (dark at times) throughout, to the point where I would find myself laughing out loud.

I definitely recommend this book!

I was really intrigued by this blurb.

What makes a psychopath? A young woman delves into her family’s shadowy legacy in a terrifying novel by the #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of Strangers We Know.

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.

As much as the blurb drew me in, sadly, the book didn't deliver. It felt like I was reading three diferent books, that had been pushed together, with no connection between them at all, except for the actual crime. It would have been great to see the stories actually woven together in some manner.

Thank you to @netgalley for a copy os this book in return for my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I absolutely love reading books about psychology, psychopathy, and true crime. I was intrigued from the description and thought the premise of the book was interesting. I thought this book was thrilling and enjoyed the suspense and twists and turns. I would definitely recommend!

I absolutely loved this book. A fresh take on serial killers and psychopathy. Very nicely paced with a good plot.

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, from Thomas & Mercer and #NetGalley. Thank you to the publishers, NetGalley and the author for the opportunity to preview and review. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Surprises, twists and suspenseful turns.

Can you trust your family members? Can you trust yourself, your own memories? Especially if you come from a family with generations of psychopaths: famous, violent psychopathic criminals? Sure, there are non-violent psychopaths, but are they really non-violent? Or just unaware, or not yet caught?

The premise is intriguing. The setting (psychopathic family reunion at a resort, with relatives dropping dead one by one) and the mystery of the journals and the unsolved murders are interesting.

I guessed the nature of Olivia quite early on, the author placed quite a few hints in the protagonist’s own narration, but there were still twists that kept my interest throughout. An entertaining read.

Is psychopathy genetic or nurtured? Imagine all the ways a psychopathic mind could manifest. Now imagine a family of psychopaths. The concept here is intriguing and caught my attention from the beginning. Beyond the concept itself, my favorite part of this book was how easy it was to read without being dull. I think a lot of the success there lies in how the narrative voice of the different characters were written, which was engaging. Birdie was relatable as a character where Olivia seemed more neutral. While I enjoyed the grotesque cast of characters in the Eriksen clan, I both wanted to know more about them and felt like there were too many to track with any clarity. I definitely referred to that family tree every few chapters. The plot twists were good, if sometimes predictable, but not so blatant as to be cringeworthy. I did second guess myself once or twice. In the end it was an enjoyable read, but raced into a chaotic ending that left me feeling more disengaged from the story than when it began.

Thank you to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for an ARC of this title.

I tried...and tried...and tried some more..but I simply could not find anything enjoyable about the story. It felt like three books that had been haphazardly turned into one but with no actual connection besides the fascination of true crime. The story is told from the POV's of Olivia who comes from a long line of murderers and Birdie a podcaster who focuses on unsolved crimes of minorities and then interspersed with news articles. Reading Olivia's chapters felt like someone had copy and pasted from a medical textbook while Birdie's chapters had no real focus and felt mostly like regurgitated facts on the lack of justice given to a minority who has been murdered. The best chapters were the ones written as news articles and even those lacked a connection. The whole book fell completely flat for me.

Olivia Eriksen is completing her doctoral work on her own family, the theme being, "What makes a psychopath?" Her family, the Eriksens are well known for the many sociopaths and psychopaths, some murderous in Oregon's history, and Olivia has made a career online discussing her family and the science behind the mental disorder.

When an opportunity arrives for Olivia to observe her estranged family at a reunion party, she jumps at the chance and bring her fiance Howard. It isn't long though, before there's a probable murder and the family realizes they are cut off from civilization by a natural disaster. Can Olivia survive the weekend? And are these mental disorders genetic only? This fast moving mystery is interspersed with a journal and a parallel story of a lost woman. How it all comes together is very satisfying. f you like reading about serial killers, psychopaths and locked room mysteries, The Family Bones is for you!
#Thomas&Mercer

“The Family Bones” is a classic locked room who-done-it by Elle Marr. Instead of being a locked room, however, there’s a large family reunion in an isolated (and subsequently cut of from everywhere) location. The story is told focusing on three main people - Birdie, a true-crime podcaster; Olivia, both a family member of the reunion and working on her thesis paper; and a diary writer. It took a while for all three stories to connect. Ms. Marr does a nice dance of leaving red herrings around the story yet also adding in twists and turns to keep one interested. While as a whole this book worked, it didn’t always work for me. However, on the positive, this book was engaging and a pretty fast read. There’s also a family tree if, like me, you need to figure out who is who in this large family.

Thank you to NetGalley, Elle Marr, and the publisher for allowing me to review this advanced reader copy.

This was a remarkable psychological thriller from the beginning. It’s underpinnings were psychological in nature as was it’s reason for existing. The cast of characters was phenomenal and almost too numerous to mention. They were interesting and believable. There were plot twists and turns that were surprising. This book should be required reading for Psychology students everywhere.