Jewell Stretches Again
Those familiar with Lisa Jewell will recognize her penchant for locked doors and secret family connections in her new novel, The Family Upstairs. Jewell has a flair for portraying extreme family dysfunction in a way that carefully treads the line of credulity, given the outrageousness of its complicated plotting. In this book, Libby Jones is Jewell’s main heroine: a strait-laced young woman whose life has been meticulously controlled and planned after a chaotic upbringing by a foster mother who was caring but haphazard. Her organized life is turned upside down, however, when she receives notice that she has reached the age of inheritance from her birth family’s estate. Libby learns that she is now the owner of the mansion where her parents died of mysterious circumstances almost 25 years ago when she was a baby. From the articles she has read, investigators assumed that a suicide pact among cult members was the likeliest explanation, and that there were other children in the house who were never located. She was found abandoned but in good health when the bodies were discovered. What Libby will soon discover is that her acquisition of the house has also spurred others to return to the site with agendas of their own. Jewell slowly unpeels the true events of the deaths in the house through alternating points-of-view from the children who were party to the events. With its many twists and connections, unreliable narrators and biases, The Family Upstairs is an addictive read that compels the reader to willingly swallow largely unbelievable plotlines with relish. The novel could be described as a combination of Flowers in the Attic (by VC Andrews) and Helter Skelter (Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry) or other stories of cults/extreme family-based societies. With an ending that is satisfying but tantalizingly open-ended, Jewell’s latest will provide her fans with some more exciting hours of reading pleasure.
Thanks to the author, Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
