Day: April 5, 2021

Book Review: The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell


The Family Upstairs
Author:  Lisa Jewell

Published: November 5, 2019
340 Pages

Reviewed By: Kim
Kim’s Rating: 3 stars

Book Description:

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.

The can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.

Kim’s Review:

This was my book club’s pick for March and my first Lisa Jewell book. And what a disappointment. This is another one that had all the makings for a great ending with a crazy twist and a drop mic ending and then it just went wah-wah. It was so anticlimactic and the characters were flat. By the time I was done, I sat there and asked, “so why did I read that?”

There was one interesting subplot near the middle of the book and that kinda saved this from being a total loss. Lucy was legit the only even remotely interesting character, but like all the rest, her ending felt incomplete. I just wasn’t impressed and I can’t say that I recommend it even as a generic murder mystery.

Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK