BOOK REVIEW: The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

In a large house in London’s fashionable Chelsea, a baby is awake in her cot.In the kitchen lie three decomposing corpses.They’ve been dead for several days. Who has been looking after the baby?And where did they go?

Publisher: Century

Pages: 451

Lisa Jewell was one of my favourite authors when I was younger, I would buy her new books immediately and they are still on my bookshelves to this day. When she switched genre to psychological thrillers I really wasn’t sure if I should read them. However, the lovely people at Century kindly sent me The Family Upstairs and I couldn’t resist. The problem is that it is fantastic so now I am going to have to buy all her other thrillers. 

The book focuses on Libby Jones, on her 25th birthday she discovers that she has inherited a mansion in Chelsea. She then discovers that her birth parents bodies were discovered there. She was alive and well in her cot upstairs but her older brother and sister had vanished. 

Libby’s life has changed forever, she can sell the house and bank a huge amount of money but what she really wants is the truth. What happened to her parents? Who looked after her for the few days before the police discovered the decomposing bodies?

The Family Upstairs is a fantastic thriller, I could not put it down and flew through the pages. I do enjoy this genre but I sometimes find the characters a bit flat. However, Lisa Jewell delivers believable and interesting characters, they are not merely there to move the plot along. 

Jewell packs a lot in, deception, cults, domestic abuse, sexuality, growing up, religion, love and so much more. At first the events in the book seem a little far-fetched but Jewell flits between the past and the presents, gradually showing how the situation got out of control in a terrifyingly easy manner. 

Jewell keeps you in suspense for the majority of the book, there are so many brilliant twists and turns. I had to re-read one chapter more than once as I really didn't predict the plot twist coming and I love it when an author is able to shock you in that way.

This is one of the best books I have read this year, go and get a copy.

Many thanks to Century for kindly gifting me a copy of the book to review.