The Family Home-Smith-Psych Thriller-Available Now

The Family Home by Miranda Smith is a successful psych thriller that kept me guessing almost to the very end.

There are actually several things to recommend about this one.

First, the chapters are short. This serves more than one purpose. One, it is easy to grab a few chapters here and there and not get lost in between. Everything is short and sweet.

Two, this also serves to keep the action moving along at a good pace. At no point did I feel like the plot dragged – it was just a nice steady stream of events that flowed into each other.

I also liked that the author changed up whose perspective the reader got information from in the chapters. Most of the story is Lillian’s, but there are a few well-placed chapters from Matthew’s point of view.

Those are just enough for the reader to wonder which one of them is reliable – or if neither or both of them are.

That’s another thing that works well in this book. The author drops just enough hints and clues that it should be easy to figure things out. But it’s not.

As in any good psych thriller, the reader is left trying to take in all of the information but wondering if the author is pulling one over on them. As Lillian does or doesn’t trust people, the reader has the same questions.

There are a few moments that don’t exactly ring true. The setting confused me. At one point Lillian is looking out over the Pacific Ocean. But then there is a reference to Florida being “10 hours away.”

This is vague enough that makes me wonder where the action is taking place. Australia is a 19-hour flight and California is roughly five hours. Hawaii and Alaska are about 10 hours, so maybe? Maybe I missed that somewhere along the way.

Additionally, towards the end, it is mentioned that Matthew heads “down south” to Florida. What? Honestly, it’s not that hard to be geographically accurate these days.

There are also a couple of minor moves by the characters, mostly Lillian, that make no sense. But these are definitely minor in the bigger scheme of things.

The last 25% of the book picks up a lot of speed – the author cleverly builds the tension to this point and then lets everything break loose. And just when you think you have things figured out with the characters, you probably don’t.

It’s been difficult for me to concentrate on books the past month – The Family Home grabbed me and kept me interested from beginning to end. So, kudos to Miranda Smith for writing a gripping psych thriller.