The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

About the book: 

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.

The can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets. 

MY THOUGHTS 

Well…well…well… look 👀 who is late to the party 🥳…AGAIN…yes that would be me.🤷‍♀️ I keep seeing amazing reviews for The Family Remains… so of course I had to run 🏃‍♀️ out and get this one.. because..FOMO 🤷‍♀️… I absolutely LOVED it!!! 🖤

16 Cheyne Walk…prestigious address.. home of the socialite 🥂couple the Lambs… the “It” couple literally fell off the face of the earth…never to be seen again…🤔…until they showed up on the evening news…and it was not for Mrs. Lamb’s choice of shoes 👠…. This time it was because they were found dead on their kitchen floor…😳

Was this a cult?? Was it a extended family?? What the hell was this?? 😳 Whatever it was… I couldn’t get enough!!! If I had to use one word to describe this book it is… creeepy!! 😬Just how our thriller loving hearts 🖤 like it!! 😉

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more creepy or disturbing…it did…😳…that ending!!🤯🤯🤯🤯 I literally said OH… MY… GOD… out loud…I am SO excited that I am a slacker and just now read this book..😂 Now I can read the next book in a couple of weeks!! 🙌 I CAN NOT WAIT to see where this picks back up!! 😍

🖤🖤🖤 Have you read this one?? Are you as excited as I am for The Family Remains?? I have only read two other @lisajewelluk books and enjoyed them.. but THIS is my favorite so far!! What backlist book of @lisajewelluk would you start with?

5 creeptastic ⭐️ stars!! So flipping good! This read like a true crime book to me… Would you live in a house where bodies were found on the kitchen floor?? 😳… Nope… not this girl!!

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.