However, when she visits the house, she finds it to be dark and creepy. The letter announces that Libby has inherited a mansion on the banks of the Thames that is worth a fortune. When a letter arrives soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, she is about to discover who she is and where she came from. Libby Jones has always known that she was adopted. I find this style of writing keeps me focused and eager to read faster. I love the way she moves around between the past and present, and from one character to the next. I have read seven of Lisa Jewell’s books and already I am looking forward to another one. I was still not ready to walk away from these characters. This book had me reading late into the night and left me sad when it ended. Her stories are captivating and deep, making this a book that is extremely hard to walk away from. I am yet to be disappointed by a Lisa Jewell book. It took forever before I was finally able to sit down with this book. As luck would have it, when my copy arrived it was damaged and I needed to return it to be replaced. I loved that book – my 6 th Lisa Jewell novel – and immediately placed an order for The Family Upstairs. I reviewed The Family Remains at the end of last year – if you missed my review, you can read it here.

It would appear that I have a terrible habit of reading books out of order, and I have done it again. The can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note.

When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. 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. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. 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. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am. Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life.

The family upstairs book