The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell - Review

You know I read and enjoyed The Family Upstairs in August, and that I had reserved this, the sequel. It took a while to get to me from the library but once it had I picked it up immediately because I know there are other people waiting for the book in the system so I want to get it back as soon as possible. I was also intrigued to see what would happen in a sequel. I was not disappointed! This review contains spoilers for the first book, so proceed with caution!

There are three strands to this story, like the first one, but with different people. First of all we have Henry, the same as before. Henry is very selfish and traumatised from what happened to his family, but he's been somewhat settled for the last year since Lucy and the kids came to live in his flat. He loves them, even though they bring chaos to his carefully ordered life, and he loves Libby, who is still happily living in St Albans. At the end of the first book the family discovered that Phin was living on a game reserve in Botswana, and they all wanted to go and find him, but Henry discovers that he is actually in Chicago, and takes off to find him. When Lucy works out what he's done, he blocks her number and tries to avoid being found.

Linked to this strand of the story is Lucy and the kids, Marco and Stella. She is putting an offer in on a house in St Albans now that she has money from the sale of Cheyne Walk, but she lives in fear of being arrested for what she did to Michael, Marco's father and her ex husband. She and the kids follow Henry to Chicago to try to find him and Phin.

The second strand of the story is Rachel, who was Michael's second wife. We see her meet him, have a whirlwind romance, and read how everything goes wrong between them (he is abusive towards her and it's graphic, so be careful there). I can't say I LIKED this strand of story, but I did find it compelling. Michael is so horrible and keeps popping back up in her life even when they've split up. Rachel depends on her dad but is trying to make it on her own. She's quite spoilt but I liked her and her strand of story. Her life intertwines with Lucy's in France, which I loved. 

Finally there's Samuel, a detective inspector. Bones are found on the banks of the Thames and investigation finds that they are around twenty five years old but they have been in the river for only around a year. They turn out to be the bones of Birdie, who lived in Cheyne Walk with Lucy and Henry back in the day. Samuel therefore contacts Libby, who has to cover up a lot of things for her family.

This is a really satisfying book and compelling to read. I felt like it had a good ending BUT if there's a third one I won't complain. I'm giving this four out of five!