“Socialite and husband dead in suicide pact. Teenage children missing; baby found alive.”
The Family Upstairs is the story of that baby’s journey to discover her roots and what really happened that night.
The baby, Libby, is now twenty-five years old and set to inherit the Chelsea mansion where the event occurred. Lucy is a homeless English woman with two children in France. Henry is a rich, but odd, man who is one of the missing teenagers twenty-five years later.
“It all happened so slowly, yet so extraordinarily quickly, the change to our parents, to our home, to our lives after they arrived.”
All three tell their tales of what happened both before and after the event.
The Family Upstairs is a compelling thriller that builds an impressive atmosphere of dread. Everyone but the people involved know something horrible is going to happen. It is truly a can’t-put-it-down book. The characters are so human and realistic that you are forced to read one more chapter until the story is done regardless of what time your alarm will ring.
I love the author’s books for their originality in a crowded genre. But most of all, I love that she thanked the “two double vodkas and tonics that saw me through the last three chapters of this book late on a Friday night…Cheers!” in the Acknowledgements. Can you imagine what Hemingway or Poe would write if they thanked their alcoholic muses? Cheers, indeed.
The Family Upstairs should appeal to most thriller and women’s fiction fans especially if they like their tales dark. It would not be a good choice for those readers triggered by child abuse. Otherwise, pick up this spellbinding family thriller. 4 stars!
Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.
Here are my reviews of two other family thrillers by this author: