Q: We don’t hear from Libby as much in this novel as we did in THE FAMILY UPSTAIRS. Why did you decide to use her less in the narrative?

Were you surprised that Lucy helped the police find Henry in Chicago. Why do you think she helped them? Would Henry have done the same, if their roles were reversed?

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Note: This review contains major spoilers for the first book in the series, The Family Upstairs. Proceed with caution. If you like crime fiction, get hold of Sarah Jewell’s “The Family Remains” without further delay and be prepared to be hooked. The setting, the characters, the unexpected plot twists, and the tension that builds up as it draws closer to the end make it impossible to put the book down before finishing it. It’s an outstanding independent sequel to “The Family Upstairs,” which came out in 2019. Let’s go through the plot briefly to gain a better understanding of what it’s all about. The book is purposefully convoluted but at times it just felt too disorienting. In the beginning, I debated abandoning this, but wanted to see how Jewel would bring it all together. I was impressed by the ending. This is the sequel to The Family Upstairs , but you don’t have to read The Family Upstairs (which I barely remember) to enjoy The Family Remains. There are several POVs and many mysteries to resolve, including the detective trying to solve the case, Rachel; a recently married jewelry designer, Lucy Lamb; who fled London 30 years ago; and her creepy brother, Henry, who, to put it mildly, has some issues. I found the mystery behind the remains intriguing, but the storyline that interested me the most was that of Rachel and her husband, Michael.

I remembered the first book mostly although the details eluded me until this book reminded me, very well, of what exactly had happened in the first book. Because this book does such a good job of going over past events, I can see how someone could read this book and understand what is going on, more or less. But I think that the story has more meaning if you do read the first book before you read this one. It's not a pretty story, bad things happened in the past and they are happening in this book, too. This is the sequel to Lisa Jewell's chilling The Family Upstairs, a top notch multilayered and intricate psychological thriller with its old and new characters. Jewell weaves her magic with her disturbed and unsettling storytelling, in which there are mysteries and surprising connections are made. In London, a mudlark discovers a washed up bag of bones on the banks of the River Thames. The bones are those of a young woman who had suffered blunt force trauma, DCI Samuel Owusu investigates as forensic evidence leads him to a Chelsea mansion in Cheyne Walk where 3 decades ago, three dead bodies were found in the kitchen. We become reacquainted with the Lamb family, Lucy, with her two children, Marco and Stella, her brother, Henry, and Libby, haunted by the trauma of their past. The novel is relayed through the perspectives of the various characters. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell comes an intricate and affecting novel about twisted marriages, fractured families, and deadly obsessions in this stand-alone sequel to the “brilliantly chilling” ( Ruth Ware , New York Times bestselling author) The Family Upstairs .In Jewell fashion, she keeps her chapters short. She adds tension with dual timelines and the Police Inspector’s investigation uprooting Lucy’s goal of reuniting her family. As they all race to discover answers to these convoluted mysteries, they will come to find that they’re connected in ways they never could have imagined. A: The original motivation for bringing Rachel’s storyline into the sequel was to see how she felt about the death of her husband. I wasn’t sure if she would be devastated by it, or relieved. I had mentioned her so fleetingly in the first novel that I felt like she was just waiting to be brought fully to life and I wouldn’t know who she was or what her marriage had been like until I started writing her. The true horror of her marriage played out slowly as I wrote it and went to places I had not been expecting it to go. Coercive control is something I’ve written about a lot over my career, even in my very early ‘feelgood’ novels. I experienced it in my first marriage in my early twenties and it’s something that I think I will always revisit in my writing. Expanding on #4... This was officially one star when Henry and Lucy reentered the UK with their fake passports AFTER Interpol had located them and they were questioned by the police. BRUH. You're telling me that Interpol wouldn't be waiting for you on the tarmac as soon as you landed to confiscate your fake documents and put you in jail? Instead Henry is like well they need us here so duh they still work! No... Just no. Once again, I'd let this slide in the 2 hot 2 handle cozy, but not in a book that's aiming for something more serious. This is just nonsense. You committed a serious crime and you're just in the streets because some small town Detective wants to keep an eye on you?? PLZ SIR!!!

Apart from his abnormal obsession, somewhere deep down, he must have known that one day or the other, their covers would be blown, and they would have nothing left to do then. Lucy escaped to France alone and met Michael, who took her from the streets only to harm her even more. Her next partner, too, wasn’t very nice and had left her pregnant and in an apartment with six months of rent due. Lucy’s life was the hardest, and it breaks our hearts to imagine what she might have been through for years and years. ABOUT 'THE FAMILY REMAINS': Early one morning on the shore of the Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery. When Owusu sends the evidence for examination, he learns the bones are connected to a cold case that left three people dead on the kitchen floor in a Chelsea mansion thirty years ago. Apparently, Henry had tried to hurt Phin previously as well, and she was scared that this time too, he would end up doing something that would blow not only their cover, which they have managed to keep all this while, but also land them in prison for something they cannot actually be blamed for. Lucy is the same Lucy who was once married to Michael Rimmer. She, too, flies off to Chicago, taking her kids with her, to find Henry and stop him from doing what he intends to do.A year ago I listened to The Family Upstairs, the first book in the Family Upstairs series. The Family Remains is the second book (will there be more?) in the series and it's just as confusing, disturbing, and creepy as the first book. Of course it is, we still have some of the weird characters from the first book, going strong, and doing all their creepy things to other people. What do you think happened after Phin arrived at Lucy’s home? Write a chapter from the perspective of one of the other characters about how the reunion went.