20191031_143615.jpgWelcome to my review of one of my most-anticipated reads this year, The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell! A big thank you to Atria Books for sending me an ARC and finished copies, so I am giving away my ARC here.

About the Book:

From the New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone and Watching You comes another page-turning look inside one family’s past as buried secrets threaten to come to light.

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.

My Thoughts:

Libby receives a letter on her twenty-fifth birthday that is supposed to tell her who she is. She was adopted, and this letter is a link to her birth family.

The letter contains the names of her birth parents and the knowledge she’s inherited an old manse on the banks of the Thames.

Libby is not the only one waiting for this day, and she’s about to meet the rest.

The fateful day where it all begins is when the police receive a call to the manse because a baby is crying. That baby is Libby. They also find three dead bodies and a suicide note. Lastly, the other four children are missing.

Three families are embroiled in this mystery, and The Family Upstairs unfolds bit by bit with each tantalizing detail. The creep factor is high on this one. The narrative is complex and enthralling as it builds the tension.

Overall, The Family Upstairs is Lisa Jewell’s creepiest, darkest, most disturbing book yet. I was hooked on the story from start to finish.

I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.

About the Author:

Lisa was born in London in 1968. Her mother was a secretary and her father was a textile agent and she was brought up in the northernmost reaches of London with her two younger sisters. She was educated at a Catholic girls’ Grammar school in Finchley. After leaving school at sixteen she spent two years at Barnet College doing an arts foundation course and then two years at Epsom School of Art & Design studying Fashion Illustration and Communication.

She worked for the fashion chain Warehouse for three years as a PR assistant and then for Thomas Pink, the Jermyn Street shirt company for four years as a receptionist and PA. She started her first novel, Ralph’s Party, for a bet in 1996. She finished it in 1997 and it was published by Penguin books in May 1998. It went on to become the best-selling debut novel of that year.

She has since written a further nine novels, as is currently at work on her eleventh.

She now lives in an innermost part of north London with her husband Jascha, an IT consultant, her daughters, Amelie and Evie and her silver tabbies, Jack and Milly.

Lisa’s Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/LisaJewelloff…

Have you read The Family Upstairs, or is it on your TBR? Happy Reading! ~ Jennifer THR