INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A GOOD MORNING AMERICA COVER TO COVER BOOK CLUB PICK “Rich, dark, and intricately twisted, this enthralling whodunit mixes family saga with domestic noir to brilliantly chilling effect.” –Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author “A haunting, atmospheric, stay-up-way-too-late read.” –Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author From the New York Times –Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author
From the New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone comes another page-turning look inside one family’s past as buried secrets threaten to come to light.
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.
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I had a difficult time getting into this book and I’m not sure why. Usually I devour a psychological thriller in a day but this one took me much longer. I just didn’t feel a connection with the characters and at times I had to force myself to keep reading. That being said, once I got about 50% through, I enjoyed the book. The ending fell a bit flat for me but overall, I’d say a 4 out of 5 stars.
This is my first book by Lisa Jewell. I would read for just a little bit, then put it down until the next day. But yesterday the boss was out of work; never let it be said that I would ever waste an opportunity to read. So I really began to read…and then I COULD. NOT. PUT. IT. DOWN. Apparently it pays to step out of my romance comfort zone occasionally! I just bought two more Lisa Jewell offerings in audio book format.
Libby Jones just turned 25, and she finally learns who she really is and where she comes from. She inherits a dark, mysterious mansion worth millions, where apparently her parents, as part of a cult, committed suicide together with a unknown man. Four children who were thought to have lived in the house had disappeared without a trace. Little baby Serenity, now Libby Jones, was the only live person discovered in the house. Libby, together with investigative reporter Miller Roe, begin to search to find out what really happened to Libby’s family.
The story is told through the viewpoint of three characters: Libby, Lucy and Henry. How are these three people connected? One begins to make the connections, but nothing comes together quite as one would expect. There are many times I was yelling to myself I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING! There were dark twists and turns that I never expected. I was so glad that I didn’t give up when the beginning was slow, as I ended up with a story that was brilliantly twisted, and an amazing new author to follow.
I received an ARC of this book courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley. I received no compensation for my review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are entirely my own.
Absolutely brilliant. Great characterisation, a fascinating and dark set up and a great conclusion. She’s always great but this is next level stuff.
The perfect poolside read. The perfect anywhere read, tbh. This book is riveting… Highest possible level of recommendation.
Lisa Jewell keeps up her winning streak with her latest, The Family Upstairs. Layered like an onion, it’s slowly peeled one layer at a time to reveal a riveting psychological thriller with all the elements: there is a haunting past, a huge mansion, one family doing well and then the others come. I was completely enthralled by it all!
This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2019, since I’m a huge Lisa Jewell fan. For me this book was a frustrating read. The four other novels by this author were favorites of mine and I never had any problems with the flow of the story. This book has so many characters, switches back and forth in time and I found the characters, with the exception of Libby, to be unpredictable and not very believable. In the beginning I actually took notes to keep the characters straight!
The blurb for this book is not very explanatory, as the family that descends upon this house doesn’t live upstairs but virtually invades the entire house, upending all of the characters lives and futures and wrecking havoc on the family living there.
The story is told from three points of view, the first we are introduced to is Libby. Libby has just turned 25, she is single and working at a company that sells kitchens to mostly wealthy clients who need her expert advice. She makes a living wage but not much more. She always knew that she had been an orphan, adopted when she was a young baby, and has been waiting for a letter to come from the solicitors in England to tell her what her family name is and a little bit about them. What she finds out instead is that she has now inherited a mansion in an upscale part of Chelsea, England, and need only come to the law offices to claim the house. Even in a run down condition she knows the house will be worth many thousands of pounds.
Henry narrates a large portion of the story. He was the son of the original family who owned the house in Chelsea. We will see many sides of Henry, the good, the sad and the unbelievable. He had to watch while his home and family were turned upside down and their lifestyle completely changed when David Thomson and his family come to stay, for a very long time!
Lucy’s point of view is interesting, she is a now single mother of two, Marco and Sally and has been living most of her life from the money she makes playing her fiddle. She is extremely down and out when we join her in the story. She gets the message on her phone “the baby is 25” just when she had no idea how she was going to continue to provide for her children. She heads to England to rejoin her siblings and the now grown baby who will inherit the family home.
This is such a confusing story with so many characters that I’m not going to get into any of the plot. Suffice it to say that it is multi-layered, hard to keep straight and hard to believe. It was only the closing chapters that really set straight what the heck was going on in the novel. For this story to have occurred it would have been necessary for the family, friends and neighbors of the Lamb family to have done nothing to try to find out what was going on in this house for 5 years. The children were taken out of school and eventually none of them were allowed to leave the house. I just kept saying to myself “come on, someone would have noticed something was up here”.
I don’t think I can recommend this book to anyone but I will continue to be a huge fan of this author, this book just wasn’t right for me. There are other 5* reviews out there so read a variety of them!
This book is set to publish November 5, 2019
I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss.
The Family Upstairs by author Lisa Jewell is a gripping thriller with family secrets at the core. I felt so involved with the depth of the story until I had a reader’s hangover when I had finished. The story begins with Libby Jones inheriting a huge old house upon her 25th birthday. As she is going through the details of learning about the house and the true story of her biological parents, in the background a text is being passed between several phones…”The baby is 25″! The extended family members add to the number of characters, but once you understand the family ‘tree’ it all makes perfect sense.
Oh, the terrible treatment of the children and teenagers as you really progress through the story is heartbreaking. You figure out the identity of the main narrator as the story unfolds. It is a story of parental weakness, deceitful friends, and the struggle of children to cope and escape. You need to read this when you can curl up in your comfy chair with hot tea or coffee. (Don’t drink the chamomile!)
Publication Date: October 29, 2019
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.
Dark, twisty, moving and held my attention from page one to page 446. Loved the dual timelines and different points of view from different characters. If you enjoy dysfunctional families, twisty mystery, and a little bit crazy…you’ll enjoy this book.
I’m on a psychological thriller kick right now, and this one was all the things. Big scary house, twisty backstory, surprise plot twists … All. The. Things.
The Family Upstairs unravels the bizarre events that occurred in a spacious mansion in Chelsea, London. Libby is left to unearth the secrets behind this estate when she inherits it on her 25th birthday. As a multitude of newspapers and articles tell, the mansion has been empty for over 24 years, when Libby’s parents died in a suicide pact and left her as a baby for officials to find. But, Libby has lots of questions about her past, and she is determined to do some digging to find the truth. Little does she know that some others have been counting down the day until she inherits this estate to get a glimpse of the well-known abandoned baby from all those years ago.
I honestly felt like I was confused and wasn’t exactly sure how things would connect for about 70% of the book. The story was odd and kept me intrigued, but I definitely struggled learning everyone and their roles at the beginning. Also, the end did was not necessarily what I expected, and I felt as though this whole book was a little too mild to be considered a thriller. Another good read from Lisa Jewell, but definitely not what I was expecting to read.
There was plenty of suspense, it was part domestic drama, with a little bit of horror thrown in. If chilling houses, mysterious deaths, unexplained disappearances, and dark family secrets pique your curiosity, Lisa Jewell’s The Family Upstairs is a must-read.
An excellent read that kept me guessing right to the end.
Overall its a unique plot and story. However I didn’t find myself that attached to the characters, so at moments I almost stopped reading. I did end of finishing it because there was a lot of unanswered questions throughout the book, that only the ending would clear up.
I find other Lisa Jewell books are better then this one.
This book is SO freaking cool. Love the way the different points of view and how the NOW and THEN chapters were organized. Fab fab read.
Lisa Jewell’s ‘The Family Upstairs’ is a chilling, psychological mystery about a bizarre cult, missing children and an abandoned old house with a sinister history. It’s a brilliantly crafted plot, with characters you care about. The author deftly leads us up blind alleys and keeps us enthralled throughout the entire journey with her clever use of three narrative points of view, spread out over thirty years. I read this book in twenty-four hours and I think I may have a new favourite author.
Very… Disturbing
I just could not stop reading. Page after page, word after word seemed to build this intensity inside me.
I had to know. Now, I know.
And I’m not disappointed!
A thrilling story, masterfully written.
I had a really hard time getting into it and it was always the last one I was interested in when I had a chance to read. The plot was unique but I didn’t care for any of the characters and found the entire last 1/3 to be odd.
It also ends with a cliffhanger, which I have never been a fan of. If there was a sequel I wouldn’t care enough to find out what happens
I absolutely loved this novel. The plotting alone was a masterpiece and the last line will stay with you…
great read, i really hope there is a book 2