Like The Strangers. If The Strangers wanted your babies and kidnapped your dog. This week, we read Matt Shaw’s My Family, a horror novella on KU. Let’s get started!
What Is My Family About?
When a terrible storm rips through their area, James and Cathy make the most egregious error you can make in the horror world. They let two strangers into their home. Well, James lets two strangers into their home. And while they leave without incident the next morning, Cathy knows something is wrong.
Two of their daughters have come home with a mysterious box of treats and won’t tell Cathy where they came from. The dog has somehow managed to escape the yard. And what’s worse is the letter (that pesky ol’ letter politely requesting that Cathy give The Strangers two of her children).
Later, when The Strangers return, they’re not simply asking for the children anymore. They won’t leave the house without two to call their own. And now, Cathy and James must decide: Will they choose which two children to sacrifice? Or will they die trying to save their family?
What Worked…
This is the second Matt Shaw book I’ve read (the first being a Christmas-style choose your own murder). And I will say, the writing style is pretty consistent. Despite the heavy content, these are easy books to get through. There’s not a whole lot of fluff, and the dialogue is well done. Sitting at 88 pages on Amazon and available in KU, this is a really fun book to chomp through on a sunny afternoon. From a nuts-and-bolts perspective, it’s a well-crafted book.
One thing My Family does amazingly well is craft creepy characters. The Strangers (Jeff and Dawn) are almost eerie in the way they’re written. When the strangers (Dawn and Jeff)are introduced in the first half of the book, they almost seem sympathetic to James and Cathy. As we get to know them, it becomes incredibly clear that this is really just a symptom of their disconnected reality. As I’ve mentioned in my review on Jon Athan’s Are Your Parents Home?, there’s something innately terrifying to me about a Thing that can’t be reasoned with. These people were not kind because they were conning you or because they were playing 4D chess. These people are just psychotic. Jeff and Dawn are convinced that they are helping James and Cathy by taking two children off their hands. The strangers want a family, and it’s ‘only fair’ that they get some children. The whole thing is just so creepy. Absolutely fantastic.
… And What Didn’t
While I thought Jeff and Dawn were very well done, there are a few elements of the story that I just had a hard time getting behind. As always, I’ll mark spoilers clearly for those who want to be surprised when they read it themselves.
Something you do not need spoilers for is the absolute silliness of the legal side of this book. There’s a lot of time spent with the characters reasoning out that if they were to sign their children away to this mystery couple, that’s it. It’s a totally real contract that’s enforceable by the court and a done deal, which was just silly. I understand that when you’re panicked, you don’t think clearly, but it was just so weird to spend so much time on nonsense. Silliness. Get to the chopping, Mr. Shaw.
Spoliers For My Family Below!!!
Click here to read my gripe with the ending
For one, the ending of My Family hits you like a truck. It’s very sudden, I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense, and it just doesn’t feel very satisfying for me. In short, Jeff kills both his wife and James. He then, for some reason, offers to be Cathy’s new husband and the father to her children. When a child awakens upstairs, Cathy is left to go tend to her on her own and uses this time to call the police. When Jeff learns of what she’s done, he slaughters the rest of the family. That’s the book. Cathy fades to black and Jeff is rushing upstairs to kill her babies. Boom. Done.
After we’ve been on a journey with the family and after we’ve seen everything Cathy has fought so hard for, it’s frustrating to not see some kind of vindication. This woman who reads nonstop horror novels has, for some reason, not come up with any plan other that ‘call the police and for some reason tell the psycho about it while my babies are upstairs’. It just felt very strange and very rushed.
Click here to read my issues with the husband
If I were sent to my own private hell, I’m sure it would be one where I was stupid enough to tie my life to James. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine a worse fate than having this piece of shit be the father to my children. And maybe he was meant to be written like that. Maybe Mr. Matt Shaw knew that this was pure nightmare fuel for women, but it just felt so frustrating to me. He was worthless throughout the entire book. He spends the first half absolutely belittling and undermining his wife and putting his family in danger. And when he is forced into making a decision on which two children to give up, he just does it. Much like Jack in the end of Titanic, I feel James should have just done the honourable thing and just fucking died. That’s it. That’s my gripe.
Click here to read my crash out regarding Jeff’s character
I thought Jeff was scary. Overall, he’s a very scary character, and to give you a good idea of what my complaint is, I’m going to have to spoil the entire book for you. Once Jeff and Dawn break into the house and subdue the children, Jeff spends his time with the couple trying to get them to sign the aforementioned silly contract. Throughout this time, he’s violent with James, but much of this is left out as the story kind of jumps to Cathy’s perspective. While we’re in Cathy’s perspective, there’s more conversation with Jeff. We get to see that (in his mind) he’s just a Good Husband doing the things that Good Husbands do (give their baby-crazed wife a baby). He seems to be doing this largely for Dawn. Up until this point, everything is tense. It’s once he rapes Cathy that he kind of lost me.
I could understand the assault from a story perspective. I really thought that this was going to be a plot device to give Cathy Baby Immunity and be the bargaining chip to get her and her children out of danger. When Dawn hears him raping her, I thought for certain that this was going to be the key to unravelling the couple. Instead, people just kind of move on. Jeff murders James in frustration, and then murders his own wife to try to ‘fix’ the situation. He suggests that, instead of Cathy being a single mother of 5 (6?), she marry him instead. Maybe I just gaslit myself into a different ending, but it feels like the whole thing just makes his character weaker and doesn’t especially serve the plot.
This feels, again, like a rape that probably could have been left out of the book. While it does partially serve to provoke James into lashing out (resulting in his death), there were more logical ways to get there. I don’t know. It knocked a star off for me.
Final Thoughts
Overall, My Family is a good book. Matt Shaw’s writing is clear, the characters are spooky, and if you’re looking for a good home invasion story, this will definitely scratch that itch. If you’re not as picky with your characters as I am, this could be an easy 5-star read. Pick it up on KU and let me know what you think!