Get ready for the heavy. It’s an interesting puzzle of trauma, but go in prepared. Very clever and very creepy all at once.
Summary:
Libby Johnson’s 25th birthday is momentous as the day she will finally get answers about her birth parents. But when she inherits a mansion where her parents died in an apparent triple suicide pact and left her in a crib upstairs, there are far more questions than answers. Libby sets off on a journey to discover the secrets of the house, its cultish inhabitants and the missing children that used to live there. Meanwhile, the rest of the missing family is just as curious about Libby and are sifting back through their own pasts to find her.
Verdict: 7.5/10
I guess from the synopsis on the book jacket, I should have known this book would intense, but intense in ways that I didn’t expect. It was slower paced at the beginning. There’s three different storylines that you’re trying to connect. And part of the believability is the progression and growing dread. Particularly, one storyline walks you through how an upper-class family would lose themselves completely and get caught up in such a messed-up, commune-like existence. It wouldn’t be believable to just flip a switch from normal to insane – you have to see the small steps over four years that got them there. So I respect that. Although it seemed like the author tried to speed things up slightly by adding a murder in the present day, which I didn’t think was really necessary.
But once I got half way in, I couldn’t put it down. All the characters and pieces started spiraling to the end where I had to know how it really played out. I raced to the finish to know who Libby was really talking to, who Lucy was in relation to the family, what happened to Henry, and whether any of them escaped and how. It was full of surprises and twists. Even though you know part of the ending as there’s obviously three dead bodies, there was so much in between.
I think one of the best twists was revealing a possible unreliable narrator. Even at the end, you’re left reevaluating which things were really true. And it leaves you with an added sinister feeling that the story might not be fully over. It’s haunting in a way that I never would have seen coming.
Across the three storylines, you get a constant feeling of being trapped. Lisa Jewel balances those emotions out so well through her writing. Her descriptions and pacing make everything seem claustrophobic until the reader is dying to have the characters break free of their situations already: in the past by escaping from the house or in the two presents by finding a safer life or unearthing the truth from a mystery.
Also did not know that a sequel to this just came out last month, The Family Remains. Love the title on so many levels, but I feel like I don’t really need a sequel as everything wrapped up pretty well. If I did, I’d want to know more about Henry, which maybe the sequel does, but I have a feeling it will be his obsessive pursuit of Phin and I’d rather not see him be creepy. Based on the synopsis I found most of the mysteries being focused on are ones we already have the answers to. We already know who killed Birdie and who killed Michael. I don’t see the point in watching other new characters try to puzzle that out, so I think I’m just going to be done.
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