The Family Upstairs and The Family Remains are a thriller duology by the queen of thrillers: Lisa Jewell. But while I’m a big fan of her work, these two books fell a little flat for me.

Overall ratings:

The Family Upstairs ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

The Family Remains: ⭐⭐⭐/5

The Basic Premise

Ok, no spoilers, here, which will be a little difficult since I’m also talking about book 2 😆

The basic premise of The Family Upstairs is that one of our main character’s (Libby) inherits a home she had no idea existed. But this isn’t some inherit it from your great auntie you’ve never met sort of thing. She inherits it from her parents. Parents she never met.

Libby was found in that house as a baby, crying in her crib, while three lifeless bodies sat in the kitchen next to a suicide note.

But, as is always the case with a thriller, there was a lot more to the story.

Libby would have to return to the home she never really knew in order to find answers she wasn’t even sure she wanted. And when she arrives, she finds more than just answers… she finds family.

Book one follows this vein and, honestly, kind of ends up more emotional and heartfelt than I expected. A nice little change of pace 🤷🏻‍♀️

But the secrets don’t end where Libby thinks and her peaceful new life is soon upset but startling revelations and the discovery of a body. This is where we enter book two.

Interesting storyline, but two books was pushing it

Now, this is a personal opinion. Other people might enjoy the duology approach for this storyline. It was too much for me, though. I feel like most of the story was summarized in the first book with just a couple hanging threads. But as I dove into book two I felt myself wanting more. And not in the fun, “Oh I can’t wait to see what’s next” sort of way. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Listen, I love Lisa Jewell. This review pains me. But not every book is going to be a winner. not every song is going to be a hit. Splitting this storyline into two books just felt like too much of a reach and I think it really watered down the plot.

Two Perspectives Makes The Family Upstairs intriguing

I love a good perspective shift. I’m a fan of dual timelines (as outlined in a previous post I wrote which also highlighted Lisa Jewell’s work). I’m a fan of multiple character perspectives. And it worked well in The Family Upstairs, so let’s start there.

I won’t give too much away about the two perspectives you experience in The Family Upstairs, but I will say that one is Libby’s and one belongs to someone else. Maybe it was just me and I didn’t quite catch on at first, but I couldn’t quite place who the other perspective was as the story began. And you know what? I liked that!

So, in The Family Upstairs we have Libby telling the perspective of the present and we have someone else giving us a perspective of the past. Perfect. Very well done!

The Family Remains introduces perspectives I didn’t really care about

But as we move into book two we find ourselves with four perspectives. Libby, the (not so) mystery person from book one, and two new perspectives. One is an investigator and another was mentioned in book one, but only briefly. And honestly, it’s too much.

Two introduce these characters (one entirely new and one hardly memorable) as perspectives in the second book is asking a lot of the reader. I didn’t care about these characters at all. And, as a reader, that’s very important to me. (If it’s not important to you then this may not be a deal breaker!)

If I look at these books as if they were a tv show, I can make it make sense. In TV shows we introduce new characters in new seasons to keep things moving forward. We expect the turnover of characters. But in literature, that’s usually seen in long-standing series, not duologies.

Conclusion

I wish that these two books were just one book so we could tie up the loose ends from the first without needing an entire other book and I really wish Lisa didn’t introduce those new perspectives in the second book. (If you’re gonna give me more perspectives please give me characters I started to care about 🙏🏻).

All in all, the books had an interesting plot and storyline, it was just the approach that fell short for me. But, hey, what is art if not an experiment, right?

I’d love to see these ones hit the screen as a TV series, though!