The Family Plot: A Novel

"Exceedingly entertaining." --The New York Times
"Umbrella Academy meets Tana French. Dark, claustrophobic, and beautifully written." --Andrea Bartz, author of We Were Never Here

From the author of The Winter Sister and Behind the Red Door, a family obsessed with true crime gathers to bury their patriarch--only to find another body already in his grave.

At twenty-six, Dahlia Lighthouse is haunted by her upbringing. Raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents, she is unable to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother, Andy, when they were sixteen.

After several years away and following her father's death, Dahlia returns to the house, where the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their father's plot is another body--Andy's, his skull split open with an ax.

Dahlia is quick to blame Andy's murder on the serial killer who terrorized the island for decades, while the rest of her family reacts to the revelation in unsettling ways. Her brother, Charlie, pours his energy into creating a family memorial museum, highlighting their research into the lives of famous murder victims; her sister, Tate, forges ahead with her popular dioramas portraying crime scenes; and their mother affects a cheerfully domestic facade, becoming unrecognizable as the woman who performed murder reenactments for her children. As Dahlia grapples with her own grief and horror, she realizes that her eccentric family, and the mansion itself, may hold the answers to what happened to her twin.
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320 pages

Average rating: 6.57

28 RATINGS

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3 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

JHSiess
Feb 03, 2024
8/10 stars
Author Megan Collins aptly describes The Family Plot as "strange, creepy, and haunting." The setting is a fictional island off the coast of Rhode Island on which sits the Lighthouse family home. It has long been dubbed the "Murder Mansion" by locals. Collins says she set the story on a small, remote island with a rocky shore in order to "amplify the sense of isolation the now-adult Lighthouse children feel as a result of their upbringing."

Each o...read more
Sara King
Nov 13, 2023
6/10 stars
Took a bit to get into it.
Anonymous
Aug 30, 2023
4/10 stars
God, this book has the worst pacing of any book I've ever read. The twists were completely predictable, and I was mostly bored throughout.

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