The Family Remains

The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell

Genre: Adult Thriller

Length: 448 Pages

Published 21^st July 2022

Hello, today I am joining the Write Reads blog tour for The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell! The tour started last week, so you may have seen some reviews already, but I hope I can add to the chat a bit – but first, some info about the book!

First things first, The Family Remains is a sequel to The Family Upstairs. I did not read the first book prior to reading this as it is being marketed as a sequel that can be read as a standalone, so I decided to test that out! My thoughts on the book will take this into account.

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 …

My Thoughts

As already stated, The Family Remains is a sequel, and while it does read like one, it would be mean to say it took away from my enjoyment. It did raise some questions while I was reading, but I guess they will all be answered when I go back and read The Family Upstairs which I definitely plan on doing having read this.

The day the book arrived I started straight away and was immediately hooked by the opening chapters. While I will admit it took a bit of time getting used to the characters the story is so strong that I had to keep going.

There are a few different “viewpoint” characters to get to grips with here, as well as a couple of different timelines, but I think the author executed the viewpoints brilliantly, with frequent changes it that left me wanting more every time.

I raced through this, ignoring other books and media just to get to the end. Seriously, I put off finishing Stranger Things to get to the end of this book (which may or may not have annoyed my other half…. oops).

Aside from a few nods to the previous book which I did not get (because I hadn’t read it obviously) and left me guessing, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read. The author has crafted a brilliant thriller that did what any good thriller is meant to do, it kept me trying to figure out where it was all going to end!!

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with the characters, and would recommend it to fans of the genre!

By the way, I did finish Stranger Things afterwards…

About the author

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.