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A: They certainly did! Especially Phin. I really had no handle on Phin at all. He was an absolutely enigma in the first book. In particular, I had no set idea about his sexuality. I had always sort of assumed that he was gay, but it wasn’t until I started to write the scenes in Chicago that I found my way to who he really was, and by the end he had surprised me. I think he needed to be less ambiguous than Henry, to balance out that slipperiness of his nemesis. He needed to be solid and absolutely at one with himself. I was excited to get to the last scene which I knew I would write from his point of view, and to be inside his head for the first and only time. I liked him very much, more than I expected to. Henry surprised me too, by not being as malevolent as I’d imagined he was going to be. But as I say, there's still potential for him to go darker!
About the book: “From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell comes an intricate and affecting novel about twisted marriages, fractured families, and deadly obsessions in this standalone sequel to The Family Upstairs.”Early one morning on the shore of the Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery. When Owusu sends the evidence for examination, he learns the bones are connected to a cold case that left three people dead on the kitchen floor in a Chelsea mansion thirty years ago. A terrific and engrossing continuation of this fascinatingly creepy, mysterious and oddly entertaining family saga. In Jewell fashion, she keeps her chapters short. She adds tension with dual timelines and the Police Inspector’s investigation uprooting Lucy’s goal of reuniting her family. There are a few minor twists that are somewhat predictable, but overall I enjoyed these characters and am glad to have found out what happened next in their lives.
Do you think Rachel and Lucy will continue to be friends, or do you think their bond in common is too painful for them to maintain a relationship? The remains of Birdie Dunlop-Evers (one of the cult follows who abused Henry, Lucy, Phil, and his sister Clemency) have also been discovered by police, put there by Henry, who killed Birdie twenty-six years ago in self-defence to protect baby Serenity/Libby. And Michael Raimes found murdered brutally at his house in France , the very same man was married with Lucy Lamb: one of the victims who has been raped and abused at the mad house! During her police interview, Lucy tells Detective Owusu that she “should have killed [Birdie]. If I had killed her, I would have been proud” (367). Does this change your perception of Lucy as a character?
As they all race to discover answers to these convoluted mysteries, they will come to find that they’re connected in ways they never could have imagined. I am always a bit wary when an author writes a sequel in response to demand from fans, especially when the first book was a domestic thriller that wrapped up pretty well. Are they just appeasing their audience or do they really have something else left to say? Apparently, Henry had tried to hurt Phin previously as well, and she was scared that this time too, he would end up doing something that would blow not only their cover, which they have managed to keep all this while, but also land them in prison for something they cannot actually be blamed for. Lucy is the same Lucy who was once married to Michael Rimmer. She, too, flies off to Chicago, taking her kids with her, to find Henry and stop him from doing what he intends to do.
In Justin’s suicide note, he says that Henry had “Such a strong sense of right and wrong. More than anyone else in that house Henry knew where the moral high ground should be and was constantly begging the grown-ups to try to find it” (407). Do you agree with Justin’s evaluation of Henry? Do you think Henry skirts the moral line so well because he understands where the moral high ground should be? Or do you think Justin is exaggerating here to help clear Henry’s name? Several decades after the three adult bodies were found dead on the kitchen floor of the home at 16 Cheyne Walk, a bag of bones was discovered on the shores on The Thames River. DI Samuel Owusu was alerted about the discovery. He immediately sent the bones, thought to be human, for forensic testing. The examination of these bones led DI Samuel Owusu to reopen a cold case about a missing woman that was last known living at the home on Cheyne Walk. Her family had reported her missing all those years ago but her body or whereabouts were never found. All the new evidence pointed to a connection with the dead bodies found on the kitchen floor all those years ago. There was something else discovered in the bag with the bones that connected that particular house with these bones. DI Samuel Owusu reopened this cold case and was determined to discover what had happened to this person for its bones to be stuffed in a plastic bag and emerge on the bank of The Thames River all these years later. Who had been responsible for committing this crime? Was the bag that contained the bones purposely thrown into the River? DI Samuel Owusu would stop at nothing until he discovered who the murderer was.I’d like to thank Netgalley UK, Random House UK – Cornerstone, Century, and Lisa Jewell for the e-ARC. The Family Remains focuses on the Lamb family, mainly Henry, Lucy, and Libby. We get bird's eye views on the family's next steps and their dark turns as they continue to navigate their lives post-trauma during their teenage years. I really loved the personalization of some of the characters that we didn't get in the first book. This book is very character-driven, but also provides the mystery and suspense that you've come to love with Lisa Jewell novels. I, for one, love Henry Lamb and his "peculiarities." Never has a flawed main character captivated me as a reader since Joe Goldberg in YOU. If this duology doesn't become a television series soon, production companies are missing out.
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