Surviving the house of horrors of their youth to become functioning, if scarred, adults and Lucy meeting her twenty-five-year-old daughter Libby was really only the beginning of how things turned out for the four. I think I enjoyed this one a touch more than the first one but to be honest this one is not a favourite either. After just a few months, Rachel marries this charming, successful, and attractive man looking forward to happily-ever-after.

I can't explain how excited I was when I found out that there was going to be a sequel to 'The Family Upstairs'! Struck by her utter ordinariness, Alix decides to see if she might make an interesting podcast out of what looks like a very small and uninteresting life. 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. It also was an issue that when one narrator had to do the voice of another’s character, there was no similarity.Lucy Lamb, her brother Henry, and Phineas Thomsen, the son of the psychopathic control freak who invaded the Cheyenne Walk mansion, have been scattered by trauma. Now back to my first paragraph, I actually think you have to read The Family Upstairs first to truly to take the full journey with this book. Rachel Rimmer has also received a shock—news that her husband, Michael, has been found dead in the cellar of his house in France. It is a credit to Jewell that I was able to keep up with a story that has a multitude of characters with multiple aliases and backstories with the help of the handy family tree she includes at the beginning of the book. Libby is also keen to track down her birth father – Phineas (Phin) Thomsen (son of cult leader David Thomsen) – who has been missing for over twenty-five years.

Rachel Gold makes stunning jewelry and is trying to get her business off the ground, with her father providing both moral and financial support when needed. I absolutely loved The Family Upstairs, unfortunately this sequel didn’t have quite the same tension and atmosphere that I loved so much in the first book.The Family Remains𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫 - Lisa Jewell𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞 - Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Crime Fiction𝐋𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐡 - 429 pages𝐀𝐠𝐞 𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 - 15+𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬:𝗟𝗢𝗡𝗗𝗢𝗡.

Now, it's just the police trying to piece together the last parts, but even that wasn't too surprising. Of course there’s a crime investigation conducting by DI Samuel Owosu after a mud larking professional found bones of 25 years old ballerina thrown at Thames River.

She has recently sold the Chelsea house, given all the bad things that happened there, and split the proceeds of the sale with her mother and uncle. There are three other intricately drawn “mysteries” within the story that connect the characters, and I don’t want to spoil that part.