Book Review: the Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this item from Atria Books, via #Netgalley, free of charge, for review purposes on this blog. No compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it, all opinions are my own

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.

Synopsis:

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.

Review:

We all read the tragic stories in the news, but how often do we consider the lives of the survivors that are left to carry on? In this story, the survivor is an infant, who doesn't know anything and who is kept in the dark, by her adoptive parents. Then when the truth comes out, Libby realizes there's more than just a simple tragedy, that they are missing children, who could be her siblings and she has no idea what has happened to them. Part fiction, mystery, and a touch of chicklit,  this is a real page-turner that will keep you up late into the night wondering what will happen-if it will be a happy ending at the end, or not. Another book not to miss this fall.

About the Author:

Lisa Jewell is the internationally bestselling author of eighteen novels, including the New York Times bestseller Then She Was Gone, as well as I Found You, The Girls in the Garden, and The House We Grew Up In. In total, her novels have sold more than two million copies across the English-speaking world and her work has also been translated into sixteen languages so far. Lisa lives in London with her husband and their two daughters. Connect with her on Twitter @LisaJewellUK and on Facebook @LisaJewellOfficial.  Lisa Jewell US Website