I felt lost and confused for the first couple chapters of this story. I'm pretty sure that was intentional. Even as you get further in and more is revealed, The Family Upstairs leaves you off-balanced and unsettled right until the very last page. There's an unravelling of a mystery and the past, of multiple characters and their points of view. It was an interesting read, written in a different kind of way, that left me questioning things at the end. In a good way.

On her 25th birthday, Libby Jones receives news that she has just inherited property in a well to do section of town. Libby has known she was adopted almost her entire life, so finding out she inherited property from a relative shock to hard working Libby. In the next chapter, we learn that a woman named Lucy has received a text message: "The baby is 25."Lucy is homeless with her two children, and this text message she received bothers her. Then we meet Henry. We don't know if any of these people are related to the other. This book goes through several different narrations, with wonderful story telling. I finished this book in about a day and a half, it was so good. I didn't want to stop reading. The ending wraps up nicely. Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

While I have been a big fan of Lisa Jewell in the past, I had a hard time connecting with this book. There are so many similar "suspense/thriller" type reads out there that when one does not grab me from the start, I struggle...and that's how I felt with this one- which greatly disappointed me as I was so excited to read this!
While I found the storyline interesting, it also at times felt all over the place. Maybe that was done on purpose to confuse the reader a bit but I just felt so lost. When I have to go back over and over again to re-read pages, I know this is just the book for me. I felt that the last 1/4 of the book was indeed the best part but to get there was a struggle. I do really enjoy this author typically so I hope to read more from her in the future. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The author uses first-person narratives to tell the story in both present time and flashbacks. She catches your attention and you are hooked. Before you know it, hours have passed and you can't put the book down. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop as it does in most thrillers. Does it? You will have to read the book.

A gripping tale that locks you inside from the very beginning. The way that Jewell writes makes for such effortless, quick reading. The words were flying off the page from the very start. The whole book has a theme of such morbid fascination that you just cannot tear your self away from. This is an obsessive, page turning masterpiece.

Libby has just turned 25, and has inherited some prime real estate ($$$$$$) in Chelsea, London that could change her entire life. She has known that she would receive a trust on this day, but what she DIDN'T know is the story that comes with the house; a chilling suicide pact that took place when she was almost a year old, a note left next to three dead bodies all dressed in black, and all of the people who have seemed to vanish into thin air - including the other children that use to inhabit the home.


This isn't your average domestic thriller, run of the mill family drama...No, this is a twisted, dark, emotionally disturbing, on a human level at times, Netflix documentary level crazy. Its a crime fiction lovers dream, honestly. If you don't read it, SHAME ON YOU!


Now, that is not to say this book is without faults. There are some parts that I was just thinking, "are you kidding me, there is no way that anyone in their right mind would do that without ____ ". See I can't say anything because spoilers, but once you read it you will probably understand. But the little things that slightly bothered me did not take away from the overall menacing theme of this little beauty of insanity.


This story is told from 3 points of view: Libby's, Lucy's, and Henry's.

Libby's narrative is only in the present, whereas Lucy and Henry venture back and forth from past to present. Jewell does a fantastic job with this writing style. Never once was I confused of what time period we were "in", or who was "speaking". The character building was phenomenal, and the entire story came so easily to life while reading. Not to mention, the entire book isn't filled with perfect little coincidences! I hate with thriller writers do that.. It makes me sound kinda evil, but come on, we aren't reading books about unicorns and rainbows here. So BRAVO Lisa Jewell, I love you!


I won't say much more about the story it's self as to not give anything away - you will want to experience all of that on your own, trust me! Even the ending, it wasn't abrupt! Jewell actually gives you, as the reader, the closure you so NEED from the ending of any book. At least the closure that I need. Know what I'm sayin'??


Thank you to Atria Books for the digital review copy!

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell was an extremely one of a kind dark drama/psychological thriller & the first of its kind that I’ve not only read before by Lisa but the BEST of its kind of read so far this year.

A family that had it all, fame, fortune and love. Slowly letting it slip away by greed and overtime losing almost everything. Still having the house they take in a couple with two kids temporarily that offer to help the family monetarily and with ways of enlightenment. This family’s temporary stay slowly becomes permanent bring and ends in bringing yet another couple to live in this house. Things begin to disintegrate rapidly; health, happiness, money, food & family boundaries and in its place a cult like leadership forms. The disturbing and frightening future that now has become reality has some asking if they will make it out alive.

Told in three interwoven stories from the children born into the original family. Libby the baby found abandoned in the house; who now is just finding out about and inheriting the Mansion on her 25th Birthday and Lucy & Henry who were children lucky to make it out alive.

Fast paced and completely addicting; get ready to finish this book in 1 sitting because you won’t want to do anything else!

An engaging Story... I have heard about Lisa Jewell but had not read any of her prior books.... After this, I will go back to her catalogue when looking for a good easy page turner mystery/tale.

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.