The Family Remains

The Family Remains is a domestic drama and the sequel to Jewell's previous book The Family Upstairs. The story picks up a couple of decades later and while some readers say you don't need to read The Family Upstairs beforehand, but I strongly disagree. I think things will make a lot more sense if they have the first book firmly in their minds. I had read the previous book two years ago and felt I was at a disadvantage because I could not clearly remember what had happened to this family.

I enjoyed the first book, but this sequel fell flat for me. There is a lot going on and yet it felt like not a lot actually happened. I spent too much time trying to remember what happened in the first book, and readers are inundated with too many POVs in two timelines and the storytelling felt choppy and unnecessarily convoluted. The push for these dysfunctional relationships didn't make sense to me and I felt I had no one to root for. 

I have loved many of Lisa Jewell's books in the past, but I was disappointed with this book. I probably should have DNF'd it, but I had hopes that things would turn around and the confusion that pervaded the book would somehow make sense if I kept at it. It did not. This was less of a thriller and more of a domestic drama about a dysfunctional family which I can't help but feel would have worked better as a short story.  

My Rating: 2.5 stars

Author: Lisa Jewell

Genre: Suspense

Series: #2 in the Family Upstairs series

Type and Source: Trade Paperback from public library

Publisher: Atria Books

First Published: August 9, 2022

Book Description from GoodReads: A woman stops at nothing to find her husband’s murderer in this psychological thriller about twisted marriages, fractured families, and deadly obsessions in this standalone sequel to the “brilliantly chilling” (Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author) The Family Upstairs from the New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell.

Early one morning on the shore of the Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery. When Owusu sends the evidence for examination, he learns the bones are connected to a cold case that left three people dead on the kitchen floor in a Chelsea mansion thirty years ago.

Rachel Rimmer has also received a shock—news that her husband, Michael, has been found dead in the cellar of his house in France. All signs point to an intruder, and the French police need her to come urgently to answer questions about Michael and his past that she very much doesn’t want to answer.

After fleeing London thirty years ago in the wake of a horrific tragedy, Lucy Lamb is finally coming home. While she settles in with her children and is just about to purchase their first-ever house, her brother takes off to find the boy from their shared past whose memory haunts their present.

As they all race to discover answers to these convoluted mysteries, they will come to find that they’re connected in ways they could have never imagined.

In this masterful standalone sequel to her haunting New York Times bestseller, The Family Upstairs, Lisa Jewell proves she is writing at the height of her powers with another jaw-dropping, intricate, and affecting novel about the lengths we will go to protect the ones we love and uncover the truth.