The Family Experiment by John Marrs

 All I can say is WOW WOW WOW! There aren’t enough stars in the sky for this book. It’s definitely my book of the year, and probably of the century! Set in the same world as The One, The Passengers and The Marriage Act – 3 of My favourite books, this is another of John’s speculative fiction books and up there with the best.

Imagine a future where AI is as common as watching TV, and people are struggling to have children both for financial and medical reasons. Unfortunately, this isn’t a hard stretch of the imagination. A company has come up with the innovative idea of providing AI babies who you can interact with in the Metaverse.  To kick it off, they sponsor a reality show where couples compete to bring a child up in the Metaverse in front of millions of viewers, who will vote some out, whilst giving others difficult tasks. The winner can choose whether to keep the child or to use their prize money to start a real life child. The losers’ children are deleted.  This seems very simple, but as you delve deeper into the couples (and one single parent) most have secrets to hide.

At first sight this seems like a set of disparate stories, but with the genius that is John Marrs (don’t tell him as he’s big headed enough as it is 😂) they are brilliantly woven together to produce a fantastic novel which will keep you riveted and reading ‘just one more chapter’.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6480590582