The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell Book Review

Welcome to my review of The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell. Lisa Jewell is one of my favourite authors, I know I can purchase any of her books and will love them without even looking at the title let alone the blurb! I do of course check the title in case I’ve already read it but they are all brilliant and this was no exception.

Click me to go to my Review

Synopsis

LONDON. Early morning, June 2019: on the foreshore of the river Thames, a bag of bones is discovered. Human bones.

DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene and quickly sends the bag for forensic examination. The bones are those of a young woman, killed by a blow to the head many years ago.

Also inside the bag is a trail of clues, in particular the seeds of a rare tree which lead DCI Owusu back to a mansion in Chelsea where, nearly thirty years previously, three people lay dead in a kitchen, and a baby waited upstairs for someone to pick her up.

The clues point forward too to a brother and sister in Chicago searching for the only person who can make sense of their pasts.

Four deaths. An unsolved mystery. A family whose secrets can’t stay buried for ever …

About The Author

LISA JEWELL was born in London in 1968.

Her first novel, Ralph’s Party, was the best- selling debut novel of 1999. Since then she has written another nineteen novels, most recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including The Girls, Then She Was Gone and The Family Upstairs and The Night She Disappeared, all of which were Richard & Judy Book Club picks.

Lisa is a New York Times and Sunday Times number one bestselling author who has been published worldwide in over twenty-five languages. She lives in north London with her husband, two teenage daughters and the best dog in the world.

My Review

A bag of human bones has been washed up on the river Thames and DCI Samuel Owusu is called to investigate. They discover they are the bones of a young woman, killed by a blow to the head. The clues inside the bag lead them to a rare tree at a property of three mysterious deaths years ago and a family full of secrets. We follow the investigations through to the end and make many discoveries along the way.

This is a classic Lisa Jewell book, it leads you along and engages you right from the start, I couldn’t put it down. The plot flows beautifully and Jewell’s brilliant writing style helps carry everything forward. There are plenty of twists and turns as well as intrigue as to what happened with lots of theories along the way. I thought I had guessed the ending but was wrong. I also thought I had guessed what happened between two of the characters and was completely wrong there too! Jewell is the master of leading you down the garden path just to find that everything you thought you knew is incorrect.

The characters were well-developed and perfectly flawed, as we all are. Each had a different back story and interlinked well. Henry was my favourite character, despite hearing his inner voice you never know what he is going to do next or what he’s up to which keeps everything exciting. Rachel’s story is so tragic with pieces of sexual and emotional trauma in her past but you get to view her backstory through the book.

This is a full family drama saga woven around a murder mystery. There are multiple different subplots which eventually interwind to connect and paint a bigger picture, giving an amazing ending.

I can’t say too much about the book because I think you are best going in blind but I loved it. It was also interesting to see that it was the sequel to a previous book, The Family Upstairs, which Jewell has never done before. When writing in this way, to respond to fans begging for more, so much could go wrong, especially since she had wrapped up the last book so well, leaving no loose ends. Jewell clearly wasn’t done with this storyline and has turned out a fabulous sequel, possibly even better than the first!

Rated