Lisa Jewell is a wonderful writer and when I saw this book come up for review, I needed little convincing.
The cover is beautiful and the premise for the story sounds great as well. This is my first read by her but I am not a stranger to her books. I have a couple of friends who have read them all and are constantly thrusting the latest Jewell release into my hands.
I decided that this was going to be my first read by her and I couldn’t be more excited. Plus it was all over IG and it was also the Book of the Month pick so I knew this one was going to be a big read going into the holiday season.
Summary
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. (Summary from Goodreads).
Review
After I burned through The Cruel Prince series in like days, I wanted something that I wasn’t going to rush through, that I was going to take my time enjoying—well for that I picked the wrong book.
This was another fast paced, fast read for me. I was once again up late into the night and early in the morning to read this one. It was so good and read so incredibly fast. There was part of me that was worried that this book was over hyped and that I might not like it. I also saw that some of the die hard Lisa Jewell fans didn’t like this one as much as some of her others, but since this was my first experience, I thought it was a wonderful read.
This book unfolds over three different POVs. At first it was a little disorientating, but ultimately I loved seeing how everything came together to create a unique view of the larger story. Though I was a little confused in the beginning, I quickly adjusted and it was smooth sailing for the rest of the book.
I loved how the characters were so well developed and truly chilling. It was a fascinating character novel that I had a hard time putting down. As I said, it was fast paced and I finished it in a matter of days over the Thanksgiving break. I loved it and can’t wait to see what else Jewell comes up with next and I am adding several of her other books to my growing TBR. If you love psychological thrillers, this is an author you don’t want to miss.
The Lit Bitch 