If I had any issues with the book, it would be that my productive Sunday afternoon came to a screeching standstill when I naively thought it would be a good idea to start this unputdownable read. In The Family Upstairs, the New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone and master of bone-chilling suspense ( People) delivers another powerful and propulsive story of two families living in a house with the darkest of secrets. Told from three alternating points of view, The Family Upstairs is a fast-paced whodunit that will keep you guessing until the final delicious sentence. The four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone. As Libby begins to unravel the secrets around her parents’ deaths, she soon suspects she might not be the only relative looking for answers. Said mansion just happens to be the location where her parents were found dead 25 years ago (of course!!).

Now an adult, she is stunned to receive a letter not only informing her who her mom and dad were, but also notifying her that she is the sole beneficiary of their abandoned London mansion. Libby Jones was adopted as a baby and grew up wondering who her birth parents were. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Which is quite a feat, especially in her latest book, which also happens to feature poisonous gardens, creepy cults, acid trips, and mass murder! Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying.

Her characters are reliably unreliable, her mysteries are unnervingly twisty, and she manages to do all that without sacrificing well-developed relationships and emotionally layered characters. Nothing makes me happier than a dark and soapy multigenerational mystery, and nobody excels at the genre like Lisa Jewell. I have a confession to make: I am a sucker for a good domestic suspense novel.

Book the family upstairs