Reviews - The Family Remains: Large Print Edition

4.57k reviews for:

The Family Remains: Large Print Edition

Lisa Jewell

3.74 AVERAGE

camryngraziano3's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous challenging hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Too many characters and plots.

cassiemandia101's review against another edition

4.0

Another 4.5 stars for me for the sequel!! I loved this book as well. I even appreciated the change in perspective with new characters thrown into the mix. One of my favorite story lines to read was Rachel's who I assumed wouldn't add much to the depth of this family's story. But I was wrong I loved this addition!!

shanaaa's review against another edition

3.0

I’m starting to think that maybe the mother is half turkish? But seriously though, why was that just such common knowledge that everyone just knew? Other than that it was a good sequel but for a Lisa Jewell book it was lacking the suspense and thriller aspect.

jeffsagoodman's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

kgonring22's review against another edition

4.25

dark

Content Warnings

brandude94's review against another edition

2.0

“Grips from the first page” it says on the cover of this book as a snippet from a review, and I can safely say that might have been an over exaggeration, or an outright lie.

So complete transparency, I didn’t realise this was a sequel until half way through, but after looking it up, found that it wasn’t necessary reading to understand fully what was going on in The Family Remains. So I continued on without reading the first book.

Having said that, as a stand-alone novel, I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I found there to be far too many characters to keep track of, and the constant jumping between them, between different years and different tenses (first and third person with no real reason why) to be unnecessarily confusing. Maybe that is my fault for not reading the first and getting a sense of the main characters.

The Henry and Phin story I found the most compelling to read, this sort of psychological thriller vibe to it with this almost cat and mouse game going on around Chicago was fun to read, and had me concerned for what would happen when they finally came face to face, (although the outcome of that also felt disappointing.) The Racheal and Micheal story was the other part of the book that I enjoyed, and watching their relationship play out had me again quite anxious for the conclusion to it. If I’m honest, I felt no real interest towards any of the other storylines going on outside of those two.

Which is probably the other reason this book felt so disappointing, was that the central mystery, the one the book was advertised to be about and in the synopsis ultimately felt unimportant. It started the story, and made a reappearance 90 pages in, but when your main mystery feels like a subplot, you’ve lost me, especially when thats the reason I’ve picked up the book.

To finish: there were two plot points I enjoyed in this book, and would have rather the book been about those two than all the other family stuff going on, and the bones from the river that were the first point in the book needn’t have been there at all. May attempt the first book to see if it was better, and at least get some more time with Henry and Phin, and see in depth why they are as they are in this book. Overall, The Family Remains felt like a disappointing mess to read.