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Book Review – The Family Upstairs ~ Lisa Jewell

‘The Family Upstairs’ by Lisa Jewell

Genre: Psychological Thriller/ Mystery Suspense

Published: 05 Nov 2019, Atria Books

Verdict: Multi-layered and fast paced, Lisa could hypnotise you to drown into her book world!

I have just read and devoured two domestic psychological thrillers from brilliant female authors and I am so excited in sharing my thoughts on one of them now!

‘The Family Upstairs’ is a highly recommended suspense thriller that will keep you awake all night until you’ve reached the very last page. Enjoy the blurb and read my thoughts on the book. Happy reading!! xx


Plot:

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.


Swathi’s Thoughts:

Loved this book! Many thanks to the publisher for the e-Galley.

Where to start? It’s Libby’s 25th birthday, and she inherits a 3-storey gorgeous but old mansion overlooking the Thames! Libby is your normal girl, who has a normal job and couldn’t just believe of her sudden inheritance! Now suddenly, she’s the daughter of Henry Lamb and her name is Serenity Lamb! Then she finds the HOUSE. It is SO huge, so old, yet beautiful with an even bigger history. Before she sells the house, she wants to know what happened in there and where did the other children go.

Alternatively, we have Henry Lamb talking to us, introducing himself and the others of his family, his house, and all those things that went wrong with his life. The strangers who bombarded a quiet family of 4 and broke their lives.

Also, we get introduced to Lucy Lamb, who with her 2 is children is homeless and alone in France. Fighting for life, she receives an anonymous message which makes her fight even more to get back to the London residence she ran off from 24 years ago!

The plot is thick and the reader is instantly hooked to bits and pieces of it. Those scenes that focus on the past – what happened inside that mysterious house which was once so beautiful, elegant and resided by socialites. Lisa Jewell takes her readers through an unsettling, and utterly absorbing plot that involves children whose lives are broken and changed forever. True to the title, Lisa paints a vivid picture of houses, and buildings in the novel with extra care, extra detailing so that reader doesn’t miss the experience! (I love houses. And buildings. It was totally exciting to be teleported to the locales Lisa had to show me!)

I really enjoyed reading this novel and only able to guess what is what, towards the very last. There are so many other things happening in this book but I just don’t want to give away the fun.

Highly recommend it.


Meet the Author:

Lisa Jewell is the internationally bestselling author of eighteen novels, including the New York Times bestseller Then She Was Gone, as well as I Found YouThe Girls in the Garden, and The House We Grew Up In. In total, her novels have sold more than two million copies across the English-speaking world and her work has also been translated into sixteen languages so far. Lisa lives in London with her husband and their two daughters. Connect with her on Twitter @LisaJewellUK and on Facebook @LisaJewellOfficial.

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