Furthermore, I would categorise Henry, Lucy, and Marco’s story as more family drama/secrets/tragedy, with Rachel’s being more domestic thriller, and a dash of police procedural thrown in.

They also found traces of Phineas, living in Botswana. They even plan a family reunion but Lucy finds out Phin already hit the road as soon as he found out their intention. Groggy with sleep, Rachel peered at the screen of her phone. A French number. The phone slipped from her hand onto the floor and she grabbed it up again, staring at the number with wide eyes, adrenaline charging through her even though it was barely seven in the morning. Ok I'm cutting myself off lmao. Anyways. I'm obviously an outlier (what's new) but really this book just fell a part in the last 25% and I couldn't in good conscience give it anything higher than a one. 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.Q: What most interested you in telling Rachel and Michael’s story? Were there elements you wanted to make sure you incorporated to highlight themes in the Lamb family story? It all starts with a bang: detective Samuel Owusu is called to a scene where thirty year old bones are discovered… these bones are connected to a case that has never been solved. There are three other intricately drawn “mysteries” within the story that connect the characters, and I don’t want to spoil that part. Apparently, the three people who were found dead had made some sort of suicide pact, and though there were reports of three to six teenagers missing, no one knew where they had gone. The child who was found in the crib, Libby Jones, inherited the house when she turned 25 last year, which she sold to a couple after that. On another timeline, we find Rachel Gold, a jewelry designer, waking up to a call from the French police stating that her husband, Michael Rimmer, has been found dead in the basement of his own house in Antibes. She isn’t much surprised, and she takes us on a ride through the events in her past—the first time when she met Michael and what followed. Michael was a rich businessman, owning an apartment in Fulham, a house in Antibes, and a few other properties here and there. He was charming, above 40, quite a bit older than Rachel, and had been married once before to a woman named Lucy, which had ended mysteriously with Lucy never allowing him to meet their child Marco. 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?

Once again, Lisa Jewell has written a clever and twisty tale of many characters. Multiple timelines and plots all work together to get a better understanding of what happened in the house in Chelsea and to these characters. With me so far? Honestly there was so much to remember from the first book. I highly recommend skim-reading it like I did, or at least have a copy handy to refer to if you get lost. POV’s alternated between Henry, Lucy, and Marco (and their search for Phin), DCI Samuel Owusu (investigating Birdie’s murder), and Rachel Gold (Michael Rimmer’s second wife). This is going to sound weird, but even though this was an engrossing read, with top-notch writing, I don’t think a sequel was really needed. Don’t get me wrong, it was great to re-visit these characters, I was emotionally invested, and I appreciated the closure regarding certain characters fates, but by the end of this book, I felt we were at the same place as the end of The Family Upstairs. Rachel’s story arc was my favourite, likely because she was a new character with a fresh take, but the hunt for Phin became rather tedious in the second half. Also, I really missed Libby’s POV, and thought she would’ve had more of an active role in the search for her father.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.

I consider myself something of a thriller connoisseur and it’s my firm belief that you’d be hard pressed to chisel out a Mount Rushmore of thriller writers that doesn’t include Lisa Jewell. With The Family Remains, a sequel to her novel The Family Upstairs, Jewell crafts a story that’s equal parts multi-generational drama and intricately-plotted mystery. Q: The Lamb family home plays a large role in the first novel, but it’s being sold off in this one and we barely spend any time in it. Why did you decide you wanted to set THE FAMILY REMAINS outside of the home, and what did it allow you to explore by not being as tied to one location? This sequel started with a dead body, as these thrillers often do, and the opening of a twenty year old mystery. But what this leads into is more and more family drama, multiple twisting subplots that eventually, over the course of time, wind together and paint a bigger picture. Furthermore, I would categorise Henry, Lucy, and Marco’s story as more family drama/secrets/tragedy, with Rachel’s being more domestic thrille

Retailers:

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. LONDON. Early morning, June 2019: on the foreshore of the river Thames, a bag of bones is discovered. Human bones. Violence is what takes the narrative forward, forming the driving force. Trauma ensues from the violence, causing fear and anxiety in all the characters and forcing them to make decisions to run as far as possible from the memories of the past. Rachel, Lucy, Henry, and Phin are all victims of years of violence, albeit in different ways. While Henry and Phin have had some privileges of being men, the violence that the women characters like Rachel and particularly Lucy have had to face is terrible.

Several decades after the three adult bodies were found dead on the kitchen floor of the home at 16 Cheyne Walk, a bag of bones was discovered on the shores on The Thames River. DI Samuel Owusu was alerted about the discovery. He immediately sent the bones, thought to be human, for forensic testing. The examination of these bones led DI Samuel Owusu to reopen a cold case about a missing woman that was last known living at the home on Cheyne Walk. Her family had reported her missing all those years ago but her body or whereabouts were never found. All the new evidence pointed to a connection with the dead bodies found on the kitchen floor all those years ago. There was something else discovered in the bag with the bones that connected that particular house with these bones. DI Samuel Owusu reopened this cold case and was determined to discover what had happened to this person for its bones to be stuffed in a plastic bag and emerge on the bank of The Thames River all these years later. Who had been responsible for committing this crime? Was the bag that contained the bones purposely thrown into the River? DI Samuel Owusu would stop at nothing until he discovered who the murderer was. I'm definitely an outlier here, many people have loved this one. I've been a fan of Jewell's for a long time, but her last two books just haven't been all that great for me. Hopefully I'll like the next one better. Although I know nothing of mudlarking rules, I throw the young boy a reassuring look and he appears relieved. 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.

Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer team up to exonerate a woman who’s already served five years for killing her ex-husband. A terrific and engrossing continuation of this fascinatingly creepy, mysterious and oddly entertaining family saga. There are multiple timelines that are well defined and I felt such dread with the earlier timelines. As with the other book, there is physical, mental, and emotional abuse that is very distressing to read/hear. It was once we got away from the character of Henry that I really got into this story. I care so much for Lucy and her two clever kids. Marco is just the smartest thing and I loved his scenes. There are also new characters in this story that made an impression on me. At some point, I had to know what was going to happen despite all the disturbing things going on. This story won't appeal to everyone, just like the first book didn't appeal to everyone. But I enjoyed it and wouldn't mind seeing some of these characters again except that I know one of them remains as creepy and disturbing as ever. The book wasn't terrible until the last 25% or so. I was going to give it a generous three stars because I was caught up in the drama of it all, but then Lisa Jewell said HOLD MY BEER and this story nosedived into one-star territory at the speed of light.