Book Review: The Family Experiment by John Marrs

Book: The Family Experiment
Author: John Marrs
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Publisher: Macmillan
Publication Date: 9th May 2024

Description

Some families are virtually perfect . . .

The world’s population is soaring, creating overcrowded cities and an economic crisis. And in the UK, breaking point has arrived. A growing number of people can no longer afford to start families let, alone raise them.

But for those desperate to experience parenthood, there is an alternative. For a monthly subscription fee, clients can create a virtual child from scratch who they can access via the metaverse and a VR headset. To launch this new initiative, the company behind Virtual Children has created a reality TV show. It will follow ten couples as they raise a Virtual Child from birth to the age of eighteen, but in a condensed nine-month time period. The prize: the right to keep their Virtual Child, or risk it all for the chance of a real baby . . .

Set in the same universe as John Marrs’s bestselling novel The One and The Marriage Act, The Family Experiment is a dark and twisted thriller about the ultimate ‘tamagotchi’ – a virtual baby.

Buy Link: Amazon

Review

I have loved every book that I have read by John Marrs, and The Family Experiment was fantastic.

This book can be read as a standalone. But there are mentions of what happened in previous books of his speculative fiction.

The Family Experiment is about a reality show, where couples and a single man compete to have a child of their own, but it is an AI child. The parents nurture it from birth to 18, but these stages happen much quicker in the virtual reality world than in the real world. The couples have to put on their VE headsets to go into the child’s virtual world and take care of it.

There are many points of view involved in this book, and each chapter is about one of the couple or the single parent. I did find it confusing at first, but once I got to “know” them all, it was easier to remember who was who.
What I especially liked about this is that it seemed no one on the show was completely who they would like the viewers to believe, and it was only a matter of time before secrets started to reveal, and one by one the parents were eliminated, and their child was switched off in one way or another.
It also makes you wonder, could this actually happen? With all the AI that is starting to evolve in the world right now.
Overall, this was a brilliant book that kept me engaged throughout. I would definitely recommend reading the other speculative thrillers in his collection, starting with The One.