The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
The Family Upstairs
Lisa Jewell
Atria Books
November 5, 2019
Summary from Publisher:
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.
My Review:
“I watched Phin peel two ten-pound notes from his wad to pay for the expensive sandwiches. “I‘m really sorry I can‘t pay you back,” I said. He shook his head. “My father‘s going to take everything you own and then break your life. It‘s the least I can bloody do.”
Lisa Jewell is a master tale spinner of mystery. I have read other books of Ms. Jewell and this one is so different in format that I was thrown a little for a loop for a bit. This story comes at you from so many perspectives that you have to remember that the main character was a wee baby when it all went down.
Libby Jones just turned 25 years old and her life is a complete mystery, being found in a mansion with a rabbits foot in an empty room with just a crib and her as a 10 month old baby with 3 people murdered on the first floor. She is confused when that said mansion is left to her. Where are the siblings that she was told she had? Where did the other teens go that were with them? Why were her parents murdered? Who was the other man with her parents? It is up to Libby to find out the strange history and missing details of her life. Will she find her answers? Will she ever know who she really is? This book will help readers come to understand the whole store unraveled through past and present tense. There are times that I was disgusted by this book - how a family could go from normal, happy and rich then fall so far was a conundrum. In some ways I wanted to shake the living daylights out of the mistress of the mansion, in other ways I could see why she lost all perspective of what her life was becoming.
The telling of the story was full of wonderful quotes like the opening of this review. Ms. Jewell made me wander the stairs upstairs, out onto the roof and back into the house wandering the sad and lonely disjointed rooms of the children and down into the kitchen where the most living happened. Like the twists and turns I took through the house Ms. Jewell does the same with her characters. You never know who is the murder and who is the innocent until it slams you in the face like a locked door. It was like reading Amityville Horror meets the Branch Davidian's of Waco, Texas with the same creepy feelings and not sure what was going to come next. Thinking you want to know but then no sure you really do.
I enjoyed reading The Family Upstairs, felt like I needed to watch a Disney movie afterwards only because the suspense was so trying and seeped into my bones. The coming together of the story was smooth, imaginative and full of great description. My only complaint was the ending. It just felt like it didn't belong to the rest of the story. I don't really know however if it felt tied up and maybe that is as it should be.
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| Four Stars only for lack of connection to the ending. Rest of story is top notch. |
Have you read this book? What did you think?
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