The Meg's Family series kicked off in June of 2007 with Meg's Boyfriend. Now, assuming that since you're reading this becuase you've already read the book, I'll just give the basic rundown.
The story starts when Meg is kicked out of the car after a game of Punch Buggy. She heads to a nearby 7/11 and asks to use the phone. She meets the clerk, Zack Murdock, and he offers her a ride home. When they get there, he is offered to stay with them since he has no place to live. He then takes Meg to her Homecoming dance, where he confesses his love fore her and the two get together. Only a few months later, Meg gets pregnant with his baby. That's where the continuous story ends. Most chapters after that are very episodic.
Malcolm Fox has kept several aspects of Family Guy intact for this story, such as the cutaways, the Meg bashing, and the characters never seeming to remember what happened in previous chapters. There has also been some backlash to the Meg Bashing, meaning that whenver it happens, Zack or Maddie will retaliate, depending on who it was. Other aspects, such as the musical numbers, have been removed. There is a lot of emphasis placed on slapstic hunor here, often ending with terrible puns (I woodn't know!), but there is a good balance between story elements, and characters.
The humor is also classic to Family Guy. Most of the humor is placed in Cutaways and Flashbacks, along with homosexual and incestuous innuendo. Celebrity bashing is also a staple of this series, and it works. However, I have always assumed that the only people who know enough about celebrities to insult them, are the one who spend their life watching Entertainment Tonight, or TMX or whatever show that pries into the lives of people who just go to work like you or I and I've lost where I was going with this. Also, to keep with the humor, there is an awkward and strange pairing withing the storyline. In this case, it's Maddie/Olivia.
The characters are very well written and perfectly delivered. Zack Murdock is a hostile, yet caring 20y/o who can care fr his family, yet is willing to drive a nail into Peter's skull whenever he feels like it. He has a major problem with Meg bashing, which puts him at odds with Peter and Stewie, as well as Connie D'mico. Zack even went as far as to kill her (to some degree) in one chapter, and even shaved her bald.
Maddie is the kind, yet bratty and insecure (which I guess she gets from her mother) 1y/o daughter of Meg and Zack. She looks a lot like Meg when she was a singer, and even acts like her to some degree. Maddie is also relatively popular at Pre-school, being sought after by Bertram, Stewie and Olivia. Maddie also has a half brother Cody (Hey, am I the only one who noticed that there are two characters named Zack and Cody here?), a gothic child who, for the first part of the story, resented his father and sister. Of course, Maddie also has a nemesis, Eliza Pinchley. She was adopted by Connie, and attends pre-school with Maddie.
A review of Meg's Family is always going to be short, because it's little more than a TV series. The chapters are very episodic, not seeming to merge with each other, but the humor is great. The characters are very likeable, even if they are a tad unrealistic, but the different plotlines are fun to read.
This story has also been crossed over. In the Spellbook, Maddie switched places with Rosie for a whole chapter, then teamed up with her to duel Miriam. In Whispering Illusion 2, it was revealed that Matt has a strong friendship with the Zack Murdock in his universe, and in the latest chapter, he saved a girl who looked a lot like Maddie from a burning building. It is unknown wether ot not there will be more crossovers.
In conclusion, Meg's Family is funny, easy to follow, and fun to read. It does the job a book is supposed to do and entertains the readers. While the characters could be toned down a little, and maybe a continuious plot could be built upon, it is still good. If you could read The Spellbook with one eye and Whispering Illusion with the other eye, then you wouldn't need to read Meg's Family, and if you can do that you need to spend less time on .
Terribly Written and Awkarwardly Delivered by
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A/N: If you were somehow offended by this episode, or want to chastise me for not following the Terms of Use to the fucking letter, then just go take a flying leap becasue it's not going to have any adverse effect on me anyway.