The Family Upstairs, which published in 2019, is written by well-known British author, Lisa Jewell. The story follows three different narrators: Libby Jones, Lucy Lamb, and Henry Lamb. Libby’s point-of-view is written in third person and in the present where the reader learns that on her 25th birthday, she inherits the house of her biological parents. Libby knows nothing of her birth family and sets out on a journey of self-discovery to find out who she really is and what happened in the home she was born in.
Lucy’s point-of-view is also written in third person and in the present where the reader learns about how and why Lucy, her children, and her dog are homeless and are trying to get out of France and back to England. The reader learns that Lucy intends to go back to England because of “the baby’s” 25th birthday. Henry Lamb’s point-of-view is told in first person and in the past, explaining what happened in the house that Libby has now just inherited. Near the end of the novel, Henry’s point-of-view changes to second person as he starts to tell his story as if the reader is Libby herself. It was easy enough to go between the three different narratives and keep track of each character’s story without feeling lost. What was interesting was Jewell’s choice of writing only one point-of-view in first person while the other two were in third person point-of-views.
While The Family Upstairs is considered a thriller, the plot felt more like a coming-of-age story and a family drama. Each of the three main characters experience and describe events happening to them, in their respectable timelines, which help shape them into the people they are at the end of the novel. Jewell is able to do this by using her incredibly detailed writing to have each of the main characters transform using the characteristics they each lack the most at the beginning, to become the thing that enhances them by the end. She does take the reader on a path of twists and turns that, may be slightly predictable, tell a dark and twisty story using the plots main theme: family dysfunction. One thing the reader will notice is the lack of other themes in The Family Upstairs. Throughout the novel, family dysfunction is focused on significantly and it becomes a tad predictable because of that. The story would’ve been enhanced if Jewell focused on some other themes to help tell the story. There are a few times in the novel where the reader may feel lost as there are some loose ends that never seem to be resolved, which in turn leads the reader to believing some parts of the plot could have been left out altogether, or done in a way that made a little more sense to the plot. Jewell’s writing paints a picture for the reader, however this picture lacks fluidity at times and feels choppy because she goes into such detail that some points become moot.
The Family Upstairs kept me interested enough to want to know what was going to happen in the end, but overall I was not thrilled by this thriller and felt it fizzle as the story went on. I was yearning for something more sinister to take place, and while there were a lot of sinister things that do happen throughout the plot, they never really hit the mark as unpredictable or jaw-dropping. Jewell does a great job of telling a story about a family using family dysfunction as her main theme, but lacks other themes in the story that could’ve enriched the plot further. If you enjoy coming-of-age stories or stories that focus on family drama, then The Family Upstairs should be on your to-be-read list.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
From the New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone and Watching You comes another page-turning look inside one family’s past as buried secrets threaten to come to light.
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.
In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.
