The Family Upstairs kicks off with Libby receiving word on her 25th birthday that her birth parents have left her an abandoned mansion in a wealthy part of London. She hopes this will lead to answers about who she is and where she comes from. In a second storyline, we meet Lucy, a middle-aged mother of two struggling to get by and avoid homelessness. And in a third storyline, we follow one of the mansion's former occupants as they reminisce about what happened in there all those years ago.
Right off the bat, I found this story to be a little hard to follow. It felt somewhat chaotic, probably because we are following three separate storylines across two different time periods. For the first third of it, I had no idea where the narrative was going. It doesn't help that this is an odd story, and it only gets weirder as it goes along.
But then the story starts to crystalize, and the real fun begins. There were plenty of twists, though I wouldn't say any of them particularly surprised me. For each one, there were plenty of leadup with clues about the direction it's going, so by the time the twist shows up, there wasn't much shock factor. But it's still entertaining to follow along as the story veers from one odd development to another.
I couldn't put this story down, turning the pages as fast as I could, even though I was taken along for an odd journey that I wasn't really expecting. It really goes to show that Lisa Jewell is a consummate writer of this genre, and she knows how to deliver a compulsive read, even one whose story isn't quite to my taste. Had I known what this was about ahead of time, I'm not sure I would've picked it up, but I don't regret reading it. It entertained me and was great fun, even though it ended up being extremely strange.
Readaroo Rating: 3 stars
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