Book Review: The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell (The Family Upstairs, #1)

My Rating:⭐⭐⭐

(Reread: 4 August. 2022)

Almost 25 years after 10-month-old Libby Jones (not her birth name) was rescued her family’s mansion where she was found by the police along with the dead bodies of her parents and another man, who from all appearances were in a cult and chose to end their lives in a suicide pact, she now stands to inherit the house at 16 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, London, worth millions of pounds. Unaware of her true parentage and the mysterious events of the past that links her to this house until she receives a letter from the Lamb family solicitor who also tells her about the two teenagers, apparently her siblings, Henry and Lucy, who have been missing since that fateful night. Though they never came back when they came of age to claim their inheritance, they reenter Libby’s life when she turns twenty-five, to reunite with the “baby”.

As the story progresses, we move back and forth between past and present as we find out the truth behind Libby’s past and the family that lived in the Chelsea house. The narrative is shared from the perspectives of Henry, Lucy and Libby. While Libby ‘s perspective is based on the events in the present day, Lucy’s segments take us through her life and what she has been doing all these years. Her’s has not been an easy life and now a single mother of two children, she has secrets that she needs to keep hidden. Henry’s first-person narrative details the events of the past from the late 1980’s when his socialite mother invited “Birdie”, a member of a Pop group to shoot a music video in their home and who later became a permanent houseguest/border/member of their household only to be followed by others, who "turned everything very very dark” Henry remains a bit of a mystery throughout the novel, a young boy whose childhood turned into a nightmare and then an adult who exhibits shades of kindness ( which he shows toward Libby, mostly) mixed with a cruel, duplicitous streak.

Lisa Jewell’s “The Family Upstairs” is a suspenseful novel with a large cast of characters and a fluid narrative. However, despite the atmospheric, dark tones and the numerous twists and turns and red herrings in the novel that keep you turning pages, the ending leaves a lot to be desired. While on one hand, we get a few too-neat resolutions and happy endings for a few of the characters (the reunited happy family vibe was a little too hard to believe), on the other there are a few gaping holes in the plot and more than a few questions left unanswered. Overall, I was unsatisfied with the way the story is wrapped up.

I read this book over a year ago, though I didn’t remember much. I did remember that I didn’t enjoy it that much back then. Though my opinion about the book remains unchanged after the reread, this time I did have loads of fun sharing theories with my GR friend SabiReads who kindly invited me for a buddy-read.

Though Lisa Jewell is one of my favorite authors in this genre , The Family Upstairs is not a favorite of mine. I am looking forward to reading the sequel, The Family Remains, hoping to find answers to some of the questions I had at the end of The Family Upstairs.