Reviews - The Family Remains

4.45k reviews for:

The Family Remains

Lisa Jewell

3.74 AVERAGE

odfulton's review against another edition

3.5

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

kaysee's review against another edition

4.0

emotional reflective medium-paced

kaycie_apprey's review against another edition

3.0

I think the title of the book is quite clever considering the spark point of the book is a bag of remains being found in the River Thames. The Family Upstairs is one of my favorite of Lisa’s books, however this sequel was just alright. I enjoyed getting to read more about the characters and meet a couple new ones… but the conclusion of each story line was lack luster and anti-climatic, particularly the Phin/Henry line. I’m not upset I read it, but I don’t believe I’ll ever feel the need to read it again.

siakou96's review against another edition

3.0

I don’t know I’m conflicted.

I started reading this right after finishing the first book, without reading the synopsis, thinking it’d be pretty straightforward but nope I was instantly confused.

Fist of all, the beginning was really weird.
Introducing new characters without context straight off the bat with Henry’s thoughts along the lines of "remember when we wrapped up the last book with me telling everyone I was coming along for the safari to find my long lost obsession? Well guess what I’m really going bitches!".
Then, I’ve read too many procedural crime novels to be content with this shit Lisa Jewell refers to as "police" but I played ball for the sake of moving things forward but my god this was ridiculous.
That interrogation scene with Henry at Chicago, I fully thought the cop would call him out on knowing how the victim died when he never told him and was shocked that he never did! That along with the passport fiasco, I couldn’t even!!

I didn’t give a single fuck about Michael or Rachel.
I gave a fuck about how Libby’s life turned out though, but we hardly got a glimpse.
I gave a fuck about Henry because I couldn’t figure out if he was gonna be the greatest villain or have the greatest gay redemption arc where he reunites with his first crush and live happily ever after but guess what, we have no idea.
I still don’t understand the writing in that reunion scene and I still don’t get the creepy double meaning ending.

I think someone at least should have taken the blame and faced the music, Henry preferably as it’s completely not logical for everyone to be off the hook and live happily ever after.

But despite all the issues I had, at the same time I really couldn’t turn pages fast enough so wtf is this sorcery?
Obviously it could have been a million times better but I just don’t understand why I still liked it.
The logical part of my brain can’t accept the million plot holes and the tidy wrapped ending but at the same time I was seriously rooting for those characters.