Warning: Potentially unmarked spoilers for The 39 Clues. * In the third book, when Ian thinks to himself "For that to be the price of a family's happiness? Unimaginable. In fact, he couldn't imagine a happy family at all." Made even worse by the conversation he's just had with his mother, who told him that she doesn't want anything to him or his sister, who's been kidnapped, and rubbed in his face the fact that most of the people at the Cahill Command Center barely put up with him.