The Family Upstairs

by Lisa Jewell

Flipping between past and present, this weaving mystery/thriller follows the story of a beautiful mansion in Chelsea and what happened behind closed doors. On Libby Jones’ twenty fifth birthday, she receives an inheritance from her dead parents: a multi-million dollar mansion in Chelsea. Shocked at her reversal of fortunes, she excitedly takes possession only to discover a series of unsettling mysteries surrounding her birth parents and the people they kept in their home. Twenty-four years prior, her parents had been found poisoned along with an unidentified body while Libby’s ten-month-old self lay happily cooing in a crib.  

Who was the unidentified body? Who reported the dead bodies? Who was taking care of baby Libby while her parents lay dead? As these questions begin to be answered, more questions arise! Full of unreliable narrators, misdirection, and suspense, The Family Upstairs keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole way through. As the story weaves between past and present, and between character story lines, Jewell leaves just enough of a cliff hanger that you are desperate to get back to that thread thus making for a very fast read! 

I loved how this book started with what seemed like four or five completely unrelated stories, each interesting on their own, and managed to work them together tighter and tighter until they all connected. A well crafted mystery, in my eyes, ties up all the loose ends in a satisfying way, and I feel that happened in The Family Upstairs. 

If you like this style of mystery thriller, I would recommend The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks, or anything by Liane Moriarty.

The Child Finder

By Rene Denfeld

Naomi knows all about lost children; after all, she has been lost her whole life. Known as the Child Finder to police and to a handful of parents, Naomi specializes in locating missing children. As a child, Naomi herself was found running in a strawberry field with no recollection of who she was or where she came from. Though raised in a loving foster home, Naomi’s few memories of her past life still haunt her: the whisper of a bedtime lullaby, the enduring nightmares, the hint of a small hand in hers, a child calling “Mother!” For Naomi, home has never been a place; without knowing what she lost so many years before, Naomi can only hold “home” as a place within herself. 

Now, Naomi connects other missing children to their seeking families. When five-year old Madison Culver disappears in the deep, snowy Skookum woods, her parents have little reason to hope that she is alive. Still, they seek out Naomi’s assistance, knowing that the Child Finder can locate even those with minimal hope of being found. With nothing to keep her tethered, well, anywhere, Naomi heads for the isolated town high in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Though Madison’s case holds little promise of a positive outcome, Naomi is determined to find answers. After all, everyone deserves to be found. 

This gripping tale keeps the reader on the edge of their seat while still evoking empathy for even the most villainous of characters. The Child Finder leaves no stone unturned and no mystery unresolved, resulting in a reader that feels at once satisfied, heartbroken, elated, comforted and with a new understanding of what it means to find one’s self when one has been lost. I loved this book for its clear description, the relatability of the characters and the surprise – though somehow not unexpected ending that ties the whole story up in one neat package. Perfect for the mystery-lovers, the thrill-seekers, and those looking to see a bit of themselves in every character.

Forgotten Garden

Forgotten Garden

By Kate Morton 

In times of uncertainty, I gravitate towards books that are familiar and comforting, like a steaming cup of tea on a rainy day. The Forgotten Garden is my cup-of-tea book, reminiscent of The Secret Garden combined with the coziest mystery that has the reader questioning, at every moment, “what’s next?”. 

As Nell Andrews takes her last breaths, she reveals to her granddaughter, Cassandra, a family secret that leaves Cassandra floored. Stranger still is the cottage that she leaves to Cassandra, nestled in a small Cornish village a world away from Cassandra and Nell’s home in Australia. Add on the revelation that Nell was a foundling, found waiting, alone, at the age of four with neither mention nor memory of who she was. Armed with little more than a deed to the land, no past to return to and a mysterious book of fairy tales, Cassandra embarks on a whirlwind journey to answer the question: who was Nell, really? 

Back up a century. Eliza Makepeace, newly orphaned and having recently lost her twin brother Sammy, lives in a ramshackle attic above a pawn shop in London. Within her she carries the courage that her mother bestowed upon her before passing – along with a warning to always watch for a bad man who is certain to carry Eliza down a cursed path. When a strange man in pince-nez glasses arrives to take Eliza to Blackhurst Manor, she knows this is the man her mother had warned her about – but anything is better than where she is now, right? 

Alternating between present-day England and the England of nearly a hundred years before, Morton weaves a tale that transports the reader to a time that, though different from our present-day reality, carries ongoing themes of love without measure, of the ties that bond, of what really makes a family, of the meaning of home. I return to this book regularly and every time, I discover something new. 

Beautifully written with detail that draws you immediately into the story, this book provides an escape that ultimately leaves the reader feeling completely at home.