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The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

Thriller

The Family Upstairs

Repeat author

Lisa Jewell is back at Book of the Month – other BOTMs include Invisible Girl and None of This Is True and The Family Remains and The Night She Disappeared and Then She Was Gone and Watching You.

by Lisa Jewell

Excellent choice

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Quick take

Fascinated by cults? This is for you. From the author of Then She Was Gone, a mansion haunted by mysterious murders.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Fast_Read

    Fast read

  • Illustrated icon, Psychological

    Psychological

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Creepy

    Creepy

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.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of The Family Upstairs.

The Family Upstairs

Prologue

It would be inaccurate to say that my childhood was normal before they came. It was far from normal, but it felt normal because it was all I’d known. It’s only now, with decades of hindsight, that I can see how odd it was.

I was nearly eleven when they came, and my sister was nine.

They lived with us for more than five years and they turned everything very, very dark. My sister and I had to learn how to survive.

And when I was sixteen, and my sister was fourteen, the baby came.

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Why I love it

I have a confession to make: I am a sucker for a good domestic suspense novel. Nothing makes me happier than a dark and soapy multigenerational mystery, and nobody excels at the genre like Lisa Jewell. Her characters are reliably unreliable, her mysteries are unnervingly twisty, and she manages to do all that without sacrificing well-developed relationships and emotionally layered characters. Which is quite a feat, especially in her latest book, which also happens to feature poisonous gardens, creepy cults, acid trips, and mass murder!

Libby Jones was adopted as a baby and grew up wondering who her birth parents were. Now an adult, she is stunned to receive a letter not only informing her who her mom and dad were, but also notifying her that she is the sole beneficiary of their abandoned London mansion. Said mansion just happens to be the location where her parents were found dead 25 years ago (of course!!). As Libby begins to unravel the secrets around her parents’ deaths, she soon suspects she might not be the only relative looking for answers.

Told from three alternating points of view, The Family Upstairs is a fast-paced whodunit that will keep you guessing until the final delicious sentence. If I had any issues with the book, it would be that my productive Sunday afternoon came to a screeching standstill when I naively thought it would be a good idea to start this unputdownable read. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Other books by Lisa Jewell

Member ratings (25,052)

Thriller
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Someone in the Attic
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Darling Girls
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
Only if You’re Lucky
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Collective
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
The Last Flight
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Wife Upstairs
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
Invisible Girl
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Winter Sister
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless
Thriller
View all
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Someone in the Attic
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Darling Girls
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
Only if You’re Lucky
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Collective
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
The Last Flight
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Wife Upstairs
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
Invisible Girl
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Winter Sister
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless