One word. Wow.
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell is everything I've ever wanted in a thriller novel. Fantastically paced, interesting characters, twist upon twist, and an ending that made my skin crawl (but in delight too). I adored Jewell's choice to narrate the novel from three different perspectives, as each perspective added a delicious level of suspense and complexity. Usually when an author writes from multiple perspectives I find myself pinning for one perspective in particular and slogging through the others. That didn't happen with The Family Upstairs; each perspective either progressed the plot of the novel answered burning questions introduced by the other characters through intriguing backstory in a way that felt natural.
Lisa Jewell is a true story teller, and if you've never read a novel by her before, The Family Upstairs is an excellent place to start. I'm currently adding the rest of Lisa Jewell's novels to my To-Read list

My favorite Lisa Jewell novels are "The House We Grew Up in" and "Watching You." When she is on her game, there is no one better for this kind of novel--however you would describe it. Her stories are character-driven with plots that will keep you glued to the page until the end. In these books, she approaches Ruth Rendell territory.

So I was delighted when the publisher and Netgalley approved me to review "The Family Upstairs."

Is it up to my other favorites? No. But will you read with pleasure? Yes.

Libby Jones is 25 when she receives news that she has inherited a large house on Cheyne Walk, probably the most coveted address in London. The hitch--of course there is one--is that the house has been uninhabited for a quarter century, when three bodies were found there, as well as a living baby--Libby--discovered in a bedroom.

Of course, she needs to learn more, but how? No one seems to know much about the murders and or is willing to say much about them. But we do through alternating chapters narrated by various people connected with the house on Cheyne Walk.

"The Family Upstairs" wraps up a little too neatly and happily to be truly satisfying, but it is clever and twisty enough to enjoy from start to finish. I wish Lisa Jewell had taken a page from Ruth Rendell's books to make this ending as disturbing as the rest of her latest novel

~~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader

I received the digital form of this book from NetGAlley

I love Lisa Jewell Books! However, this may just be one of those "not the book for me".
I was not pulled into the story like I have been in the past.

It begins with a text. The baby is back. This psychological thriller was full of some very messed up people. From three different viewpoints, telling the past and present.

It's been 25 years since the police walked into 16 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, London to find the bodies of the wealthy Lambs along with an unknown man, laid out in the kitchen, an apparent suicide pact. The children are nowhere to be found. Except for a baby, alive and well in the crib upstairs.
The mansion has stood empty all these years. Until the baby turns 25. Libby has no idea what happened to her parents and siblings. Having been adopted into a loving home. She knew that something would happen on her birthday but had no idea it would be the mansion. Now she wants answers. What happened in this house? And where are the children?
I read this shocker straight through. Talk about a horror show! Any thoughts I had about who was who and what happened were blown o9ut of the water quickly with the ending.

Fast-paced and horrific! It was wonderful!

NetGalley/ November 5th, 2019 Atria

The beginning was a little confusing because of different timelines and diverse characters, but I persevered and was in psychological thriller heaven! Libby discovers, on her twenty-fifth birthday, that she has inherited a relative mansion in Chelsea, a high-end section of London. She subsequently discovers her birth parents were found dead in that house and she was found alive. A superb mystery follows, how she discovers what happened in that house and what happened to her family.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Family Upstairs is a wild ride of a story toggling between present day England and that of twenty –five years ago. The focus shines on Libby Jones, who discovers on her 25th birthday that she has inherited a mansion in Chelsea, a posh neighborhood of London. But why is she the one to inherit it and what happened all those years ago that have led to its abandonment?

These questions drive the story but the characters who inhabit it and their history are what truly make it. I flew through the pages, staying up late into the night to try and figure out what was going on, who had good intentions, and who clearly did not. The unfolding of life in the house twenty five years prior was both fascinating and deeply disturbing. A textbook lesson in how one individual can control so many others.

And Henry, oh Henry. What a complex and twisted individual. I'm still wondering if his is a survivor trying to live the best way he can after a traumatic childhood, or a psychopath who has learned to hide it pretty well.

In any case, I really loved this mystery. The atmosphere of the book, and the characters made this a can’t put down read! I highly recommend picking it up when it comes out in November.

Thank you Netgalley and Atria books for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley, the Publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book in return for a review based upon my honest opinion.

Don't start this book right before bed, or you will find yourself like me, reading all hours of the night, the only light from my Kobo. Another fantastic, slow burning, thriller from Lisa Jewell! Her books suck you in and even when I wasn't reading it, I was wondering how it was going to turn out; trying to determine who was who.

When Libby turns 25, she knows she is to get an inheritance from her birth parents, she assumes a bit of money, maybe a trinket, she never imagines a grand house on a influential street in London and she could never imagine the tragic history that comes with the house! She is not who she thinks she is, she was left as a baby all alone in the house, three other members of the household, including her parents, are found dead in an apparent suicide pact in the kitchen; the neighbours state that there were many others, including several children, including her brother and sister, and none of the other occupants have ever been seen again, was it a cult? The mystery surrounding this house and its inhabitants had me on the edge of my seat, guessing and trying to figure it out, ahead of the author delivering the shocking twists and turns. No one is who they say they are, are they? Great book! Hard to put down until you're done, so clear your calendar.

Loved this book! Many thanks to the publisher for the e-Galley.

Where to start? It's Libby's 25th birthday, and she inherits a 3-storey gorgeous but old mansion overlooking the Thames! Libby is your normal girl, who has a normal job and couldn't just believe of her sudden inheritance! Now suddenly, she's the daughter of Henry Lamb and her name is Serenity Lamb! Especially, when the house is SO huge with an even bigger history. Before she sells the house, she wants to know what happened in there and where did the other children go.

Alternatively, we have Henry Lamb talking to us, introducing himself and the others of his family, his house, and all those things that went wrong with his life.

Also, we get introduced to Lucy Lamb, who with her 2 is children is homeless and alone in France. Fighting for life, she receives an anonymous message which makes her fight even more to get back to the London residence she ran off from 24 years ago!

The plot is thick and the reader is hooked to bits and pieces of it. I really enjoyed reading this novel and only able to guess what is what, towards the very last.

Highly recommend it.

This is a dark and intense mystery that almost crosses over into the horror genre. The point of view varies between three characters and the time period goes from the past to the present. All this being said, the novel is difficult to read, not only because of the multitude of characters and times but also because it is so very dark and disturbing. Libby is a young woman who inherits a mansion when she is twenty five. Not expecting to inherit this eight bedroom home, Libby is delighted at first and then suspicious about its history when she sees its dilapidated state and investigates the history of the house. A wealthy couple, the Lambs, once lived there with their two children and Martina, the mom, decided to invite virtual strangers to live with them for a short while. But when David Thomsen moves in with his wife and two children, he just does not leave. The only one who suspects that David is not who he seems is Henry, the Lamb’s son and also one of the narrators of the story. The plot is very involved and extremely convoluted. If you make it all the way to the end of the book, you will find that there are three different storylines and they all merge at the end in a very dark way. I have greatly enjoyed LIsa Jewell’s books in the past, but this one was just too dark, too disturbing. It was also difficult to follow unless you know from the beginning that there are three stories, many characters from three different families, and a past that is slowly being unraveled as the tale unfolds. Fans of Ruth Ware will enjoy this book, but it wasn’t my cup of tea this time.

Yes, indeed, a Lisa Jewell book is one that I am always drawn to for they always possess intrigue and mystery and with the right amount of scare factor. So I was over the top happy when I received an advanced copy of Ms Jewell's newest outing.

Ms Jewell has again embarked on the creepy trial of a family taken under the spell of a charismatic (we are told) man and his small entourage. As the story begins we find ourselves deep into the mystery involving three decomposing bodies and the ten month baby girl left among the carnage.

Twenty five years later, the baby girl, Serenity Lamb, has grown up finding herself to be the inheritor of the family home where the three deaths had taken place. Will she finally find her lost siblings and how will they react to her being the sole inheritor of the family home?

The story switches time periods back and forth as we meet the other children, Lucy and Henry, their parents, and Birdie Dunlop-Evers, David Thomsen, his family, wife, Sally, and their children, Clemency and Phin. They are invited by Martina Lamb to spend some time at 16 Cheyne Walk, the mansion that the family owns.

That time becomes longer and longer as David insidiously takes over the running of the home imposing tyrannical happenings on the residents. However, he has woven a spell around Martina, and she will do anything to please David. Bizarre things happen and everyone suffers and as Henry, the young son of Martina, emerges in sequential chapters we see the devastation this life has upon him. However, there is much more to Henry and we learn he is definitely hiding a false exterior, for his interior is quite a bit darker than we are initially led to believe.

Honestly, I love Lisa Jewell's books. I have found I zip through them and think wow that was so good. However, I had some difficulty with this tale. For one, I found it to be at times confusing. I found the character of David to be underdeveloped. It was never fully explained what or how he held such power over the people, particularly the women in this story. The switch between the time periods was often abrupt, making me stop and try to figure where are we now.

So color me a bit disappointed in this book.
Thank you to Lisa Jewell, Atria Books, and NetGalley for a copy of this story to be released in November of this year.

Libby Jones finds out after turning 25 that she has inherited a large house in a fancy neighborhood—and in a further shock, she learns that she was found in the house as an infant with no one else except three dead bodies. We follow Libby as she traces her own mysterious past with the help of the journalist who initially investigated the strange scene and the people who lived in the house. Other chapters are told from the point of view of other key characters and at different times. This bothered some readers but wasn’t that much of a annoyance for me. The characters, including Libby and her coworkers as well as the other former occupants of the house, are well-developed and complex. Lisa Jewell does a great job of keeping up the pace of this expertly-told suspense novel. I did find it less than plausible that everyone waited until Libby’s 25th birthday to attempt to find anyone else who escaped from their shared cult-like past, and I wasn’t entirely happy with the convenient ending, in which a disturbing amount of creepy or downright criminal stuff is forgotten or forgiven.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital advance review copy.

I wanted to like this book. I was in the mood for a thriller. And while there were times when I couldn't put it down and kept trying to figure it all out, the ending was awful and I can't believe that I wasted my time on it! Another annoying part was that because it was an eBook I couldn't easily go back to the beginning of a chapter if I stopped mid-chapter. Then it was hard to figure out which character was narrating. I feel like the chapters should have had each of the three character's names on them. Really a major letdown of a book. I would not recommend it to anyone.

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria books for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Libby turns 25 and inherits a mansion from her late parents who died with another man in an apparent suicide when she was a baby. The book is told from 3 perspectives - Libby, a woman named Lucy, and Henry who was the son of the couple that died. Through them, we find out what lead to the death of the 3 people.

This book was a total page turner. It took me no time to get into it and once I started, I did not want to put it down. The fact that the book was told from 3 POV’s was no issue. It flowed really well. It is my favorite of the 3 Lisa Jewell novels I have read.

This author is so popular right now & I kept seeing talk of this book in newsletters, so I was very excited to receive an e-ARC copy of this book. I've read a few of the authors other books over the last year, had to catch up, and was curious about this one. To the reviewers who called it a slow but , I have to agree.
I'll admit to not being a huge fan of Jewell's other books, but this one felt very different than the rest. But I'm not sure that's a good thing. the sister not being named while everyone else was, hot to be annoying. The different POVs was very confusing, especially without a time frame . Additionally, some if the references & terms were so very British, I had to stop & look them up so I could get a full picture of the story.
The overall story and theme felt different, which is a bonus, kept it from feeling like a total carbon copy of the last books. But was still rather strange. And overall, it felt like it was just too long.
As for being a compulsive read - not for me. I had no trouble putting this aside for days at a time to start & finish another book. So overall, just didn't work for me. I am in the minority with this authors popularity.

Love Lisa Jewell and once again she did not disappoint! Read this book in one sitting! Book was told from a few point of views and I was a little surprised by the ending. I did not see all the twists and turns coming to that finale. Definitely recommend reading this!

READ this book. I tore through it. This mystery/thriller is the kind of book you’re conflicted that you have social plans because you just want to stay in this world Lisa Jewell created. The book moves between a few different characters as narrators- I love what she did with this, but you’ll have to read to find out what I mean. I don’t want to give any spoilers. The story also moves between past and present day. The past is where I was really infuriated. Angry at Henry’s parents for being so vapid and weak as to let these vultures in their home. Birdie and David are so evil. I was so mad at them and what they did. But having seen cults in the news,it’s not unfathomable that someone could come in and have such power over others. It’s a really good book- fun to read but also thought provoking.

3.25 confused, restless, is it fair enough to give lower points because you’re die-hard fan of Lisa Jewell fan question flying over my head, creepy, oh those guests should urgently get the hell out of the house stars!

Personally, honestly, I love this author’s work starting from “Watching you”, “Then she was gone”, “I found you”.
She is the master evil queen of thrillers taken place in creepy houses and the characters formed in dysfunctional families who have unresolved issues.
So this book is one of them. I enjoyed the prologue. I felt all the goose-bumps on my arm, sweat dripping down my forearm, shivered uncontrollably. My intellectual appetite increased and my level of curiosity hit to the top.

Plot was intriguing: Unwanted and never-leaving guests occupied house and their numbers increased every day till they completely turned into an ominous, cursed and chilling cult, whose members wear ugly shapeless black clothes, chose organic style diet by famishing children.

And we met David and Birdie, they’re one of the creepiest couples as like Natural Born Killer’s “Mickey and Mallory”, or any adopted children of Woody Allen and him.

Those parts of the book about Henry, who is probably younger version of Dexter, undiscovered sociopath who hides his unconditional love for Phin, captured my attention. His mother who is about to lose the rest of her marbles, his passive and obedient, weak father and his sister who is suffering from puberty crisis and uncontrollable occupation of CREEPY GUESTS who became THE REAL OWNERS of the house were remarkable and well-rounded characters.

The thing I didn’t like and found confusing is way of 3 POV-ed story telling. I got the writer’s motive to put a bridge between past and future and connect three main characters’ stories, mash them in harmony. But the parts are too detailed and you started to feel like you’re drifting apart the main story, the creepy, disturbing guest part and dive into too many details about the other characters’ lives. There are so much enough materials on this book to write two other ones.

Till we reach the encounter of characters and combination part of their stories we may already solve their mystery. Being two steps ahead of the writer doesn’t make me happy!
So I wished we only read about the house’s past, rising of cult, Henry’s searching about paganism and his slow but expected move to the dark side. We already have David and Birdie to be shaken to the core.

The ending of the book was nice touch made me give extra 0.25 stars but I still expected more from this writer and as soon as I saw this book on my dashboard and screamed ( not for seeing my morning self in the mirror, for finding out NetGalley provided me the book, it was one of the happy and joyous screams) and the beginning excited me but the pacing got slower in the middle.

It was still good written, detailed, riveting book. Lisa Jewell is one of the best story tellers I’ve ever seen and as a hopeless fan, I will keep happy screaming before starting her upcoming books. But this time, this book didn’t work so much for me!

Special thanks to Atria Books and Netgalley to send me this ARC COPY and lighten up my day in exchange my honest review.

Inheriting an 8-bedroom mansion in London’s Chelsea district sounds like a dream come true. This amazing inheritance is Libby’s 25th birthday present. It has remained empty since Libby was found in it as an infant after her parents and one other are found in what the police call a cult suicide. The house is now dilapidated and eerie but it feels like the house still has an unexplained guest.

Told from alternating points of view from Libby, Lucy, and Henry, while alternating between the present and the past. The story unfolds as the previous owners with two children, Henry and Lucy, allow a charismatic stranger named David and his family to move into the house. Soon everyone’s lives will be turned upside down as they fall for David’s charms.

This is a disturbing and complex story that unravels a chilling tell of deceit and murder bringing the story of what really happened to the inhabitants of the Chelsea mansion.

I had really high hopes for this story, it has a great psychological thriller premise and I am a huge fan of the author’s other novels. This story fell short for me but if you read other’s reviews I am in the minority. I had a hard time following the story at first as the chapters do not tell you whether the story is in the present or past nor any way to put it into chronological order. I wish the author had taken this great plot and unfolded it another way. I also didn't care for the ending, There was still a small thread purposely left unfinished.

* Thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK Cornerstone for my ARC for which I have given an honest unbiased review in exchange *

I have read most of Lisa Jewell's books and like her writing style. This one is a little different, It is a tad slower and longer than the rest. There are many interwoven connections and you need to pay attention to make sure you are following how everyone is connected. This is not a very easy read, the 2 timelines make things hard to keep track of but having said that there is plenty in this book to keep you reading, Not her usual page turner but enjoyable nonetheless

Solid book from Lisa Jewell - not as loved as her previous ones, but still an intriguing premise.

Thanks to Netgalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review.