Is there an audiobook of The Family Upstairs?

Yes. The Family Upstairs has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Tamaryn Payne, Bea Holland, and Dominic Thorburn.

How long is the The Family Upstairs audiobook?

The The Family Upstairs audiobook runs 9 hr 36 min.

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell book cover for the Book of the Day thriller book review

Our score

4.1/ 5

Excellent

Listen to The Family Upstairs free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDNovember 2019

Genres

Fiction Thriller Suspense

Themes

Coercive control and cult formationInheritance, class, and old moneyChildhood neglect and starvationAdoption records and stolen identity

The Family Upstairs

Name: The Family Upstairs
Price: 13.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Lisa Jewell

Lisa Jewell

Libby Jones turns twenty-five and inherits a derelict Chelsea mansion, along with the story of the three bodies found on its kitchen floor when she was the baby left alive upstairs. Lisa Jewell braids three narrators across two decades into a domestic noir about a family losing its own house to a houseguest, one reasonable concession at a time.

The Review

Our take

Three adults lie dead on the kitchen floor of a Chelsea mansion, dressed in black, a note beside them. Upstairs a ten-month-old is clean, fed, and perfectly content in her crib. Four other children who lived in that house are gone, and they stay gone for twenty-five years. Jewell builds the entire novel in the gap between those two rooms. Somebody minded that baby right up to the last hour and then walked out the door. Working out who, and why they left, takes three narrators and two timelines.

Libby Jones receives the house on her twenty-fifth birthday, together with the news that her name used to be Serenity Lamb. Lucy Lamb is in Nice with two children, a dog, and a broken fiddle, sleeping rough and doing whatever it takes to get across the Channel. And Henry Lamb narrates the past in first person, from ten years old to fourteen, watching his family's home get taken away one courteous step at a time. Henry is why the book works. His voice is arch, wounded, funny where it has no business being, and he is telling this to someone in particular, which is itself a clue once you catch him doing it. Jewell rations his chapters with a miser's care.

The takeover is the real horror. David Thomsen turns up as a houseguest with a wife, two children, and a great deal of charm on the subject of diet and discipline. He never forces anything. He simply becomes useful, then indispensable, then unquestionable, and by the time the Lamb parents register what has happened to their money, their children's schooling, and their marriage, no version of the house remains that they run. Jewell writes it in increments, each one defensible on its own, and the result is claustrophobic in a way an inheritance mystery has no business being. Children go hungry in a house on one of the most expensive streets in London. She does not look away from that.

The cast is a genuine problem early on. Two families, seven children between them, three narrators, two decades, and a run of names that arrive faster than they stick. Readers routinely find themselves flipping back through the first hundred pages to sort out who belongs to whom, and that friction is real rather than imagined. The Nice chapters idle, too. Lucy's scramble for a passport is vivid, but it sits off the main current for a long stretch before Jewell finally threads it in. And the ending, while it answers the question the first chapter asks, leaves one figure walking around loose on purpose. Setup honored, not closed. She wrote a sequel, and she was plainly planning to.

Why you should read

Domestic noir with cult dynamics
Multiple narrators across two timelines
Grand houses that turn on their owners
Slow-dread family sagas with a body count

What to expect

Three narrators, two decades, a large cast
Creeping dread rather than chase-scene pacing
A crowded, confusing first hundred pages
An ending that sets up a sequel

The last act moves fast and lands hard, and the revelation about who was feeding a baby in a house full of dying adults reorganizes everything in the first half. What sits with a reader afterward is the address. A multimillion-pound house on the Thames, its rooms stripped down to mattresses on bare boards, five children working out that no adult is coming for them. Jewell has written tighter thrillers. She has not written a more frightening house.

Reviewed by Quinn · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.1/ 5

Excellent

Listen to The Family Upstairs free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of The Family Upstairs?: Yes. The Family Upstairs has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Tamaryn Payne, Bea Holland, and Dominic Thorburn.
Listen to The Family Upstairs free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the The Family Upstairs audiobook?: The The Family Upstairs audiobook runs 9 hr 36 min.
How much does The Family Upstairs cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $13.99, Paperback $10.21, Hardcover $19.99. Prices as of August 26, 2026 at 3:46 AM EDT and may change.

Filed underThriller Suspense Browse the archive →

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Common questions

What is The Family Upstairs about?: Three adults lie dead on the kitchen floor of a Chelsea mansion, dressed in black, a note beside them. Upstairs a ten-month-old is clean, fed, and perfectly content in her crib. Four other children who lived in that house are gone, and they stay gone for twenty-five years. Jewell builds the entire…
Is The Family Upstairs worth reading?: We scored The Family Upstairs 4.1 out of 5. Libby Jones turns twenty-five and inherits a derelict Chelsea mansion, along with the story of the three bodies found on its kitchen floor when she was the baby left alive upstairs. Lisa Jewell braids three narrators across two decades into a domestic noir about a family losing…