A huge thanks to Dave and crew over at #TheWriteReads for organising this book tour and to Lisa Jewell and Penguin Random House Ireland for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis
LONDON. Early morning, June 2019: on the foreshore of the river Thames, a bag of bones is discovered. Human bones.
DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene and quickly sends the bag for forensic examination. The bones are those of a young woman, killed by a blow to the head many years ago.
Also inside the bag is a trail of clues, in particular the seeds of a rare tree which lead DCI Owusu back to a mansion in Chelsea where, nearly thirty years previously, three people lay dead in a kitchen, and a baby waited upstairs for someone to pick her up.
The clues point forward too to a brother and sister in Chicago searching for the only person who can make sense of their pasts.
Four deaths. An unsolved mystery. A family whose secrets can’t stay buried for ever …
Genre: Adult Thriller
Length: 448 Pages
Publishing: 21st July 2022
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1529125804/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60494618-the-family-remains
My Thoughts
Just to clarify, The Family Remains is a sequel to The Family Upstairs but also works fine as a stand-alone novel (I haven’t read the first one yet). It continues from the events in The Family Upstairs and follows the cult survivors as they enter the real world as well as addressing some of the unsolved questions from book 1. I am definitely going to read the first book then I will likely re-read this one to pick up anything I missed but – it works fine by itself. What I will say is – there are spoilers from the first book!
DI Samuel Owusu is a determined and excellent detective is on the case of bones washed up by the River Thames and a 20 year old mystery. Then a prominent character from the first book is also found dead. As the reader is given some of the backstory, they are already ahead of the game and it’s probably the first time ever I haven’t wanted a detective to solve a crime.
The murders are linked to the horrors experienced by the characters as children in The Family Upstairs and each character from the Lamb family find their lives in turmoil again.
This book does have a thriller aspect to it and is dark and tense in places. But the main of this novel seems to be character driven and an opportunity to gain closure on events in the first book. The plot is intense and had me on the edge of my seat. I became really invested in the characters and their lives and heartbroken at their treatment (through flashbacks and inferences from book 1). The characters are cleverly crafted and their lives become totally addictive.
I loved this book and enjoyed everything about it.
I’m off to read The Family Upstairs and will likely tweak this review after a re-read with the context of book 1 but this is a fabulous and intense read and I highly recommend it.
Author Bio – Lisa Jewell
LISA JEWELL was born in London in 1968.
Her first novel, Ralph’s Party, was the best- selling debut novel of 1999. Since then she has written another eighteen novels, most recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including The Girls, Then She Was Gone and The Family Upstairs (all of which were Richard & Judy Book Club picks).
Lisa is a New York Times and Sunday Times number one bestselling author who has been published worldwide in over twenty-five languages. She lives in north London with her husband, two teenage daughters, one cat, one guinea pig and the best dog in the world.
Herding Cats 
Fantastic review Kerry, really need to read both of these books!
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It was so good
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