I’m finally returning with another book review! And honestly, I have quite a few reviews that are waiting for me to write them. And it isn’t that I’m not writing — I am — but I’ve been busy writing books and I’ve been reading lots of books but I haven’t been writing about them. So, today I’m sharing a book review for The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell.
About the Book
Title: The Family Upstairs
Author: Lisa Jewell
Genre: Suspense, Psychological Thriller
Book Description:
“Be careful who you let in.
Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.
She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.
Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.
In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.”
My Favorite Novel by Lisa Jewell
Back in 2023, I read Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell and I really liked it. So, when The Family Upstairs went on sale, I didn’t hesitate to grab it. I did have a few hang-ups about Then She Was Gone (particularly the ending) but The Family Upstairs is honestly an even better story. Jewell just has this way of really making you care about the characters. And yes, this is only the second novel I’ve read by Lisa Jewell but it is my current favorite and I have no doubt that I will read more by her (in fact, I’ve already picked up The Truth About Melody Browne, published in 2009). The Family Upstairs was published in 2019. And honestly, I’m pretty new to reading books by Lisa Jewell and she has been publishing new books since 1999. One of the best things about finding a new author is working through their backlist!
One of the things that I like most about this story is how linear it is. We are told about events that happened in the past, and we follow the characters in the present day but it all flows in a way that makes sense. You don’t learn anything before you are meant to and once you know, you have to know what happens next. The entire story unfolds like a meal, where we are enticed by the appetizer, the tragic opener — a young woman finding out that her biological parents have left her an inheritance and that they were murdered — and then we are kept hanging on by the bits of information from the perspectives of Henry and Lucy as the story continues. There are so many twists that feel both inevitable and shocking. The main character, Libby, is on a twisty journey to find out about her origins. She was just a baby when she was left abandoned in her family’s mansion home with only the dead bodies of her parents in the kitchen. They are dead in an apparent suicide pact with a mystery man.
Lisa Jewell does a wonderful job of answering a question, while simultaneously opening up more questions to keep us wondering. Each chapter feels satisfying and delicious. And the ending, in my opinion, was the perfect dessert.
Normally, in my book reviews, I will bring up the little things that annoy me about a book. But this book leaves no stone unturned, no inconsistencies, nothing that left a sour taste. And I won’t say another word about it because if you are reading this review and wondering whether you should read this book or not, you must read it. If you are reading it because you want to affirm how others felt about the story, please leave comments about your favorite sections, your reactions, and your own reviews. I want to read them all.
If you, like me, read Then She Was Gone and rolled your eyes a little at the too-perfect-wrapped-in-a-bow ending, then I don’t think you will have the same reaction to this book. The ending of this book is finite, you find out the real story of what happened in the end, but it also feels earned. While the path to get there is complicated and a little messy and things wrap up nicely, it wasn’t like Then She Was Gone at all. I think the problem that I had with Lisa Jewell’s first novel is that it just felt too easy, too unrealistic. But this one … well, like I said, it feels earned.
Beauty is the Eye of the Beholder?
Okay, one more thing before I go. I was shocked to find that the reviews about this book did not necessarily agree with me at all. In fact, some people said the characters felt confusing and not fleshed out. I felt like I had known Libby all my life by the time I was done with the book, so I can’t say I agree. And some felt that the story was confusing. As someone who reads a lot of mysteries, this story felt pretty straightforward and once I got used to the perspectives, I was able to recall exactly what happened during the last part of each character’s story without issue. But I suppose there’s always a learning curve with any book when you are introduced to multiple perspectives at once.
Anyway, this is just something that is very interesting to me because I remember being told early on in my writing career that I could look at the review for any book that I enjoyed and find someone who vehemently hated it. And that has held true! I would have expected people to be head over heels for this novel and I was left wishing they would turn it into a tv show. But maybe it’s just that this book hit me at the exact right moment because I just loved it.
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