Photo Credit: Lisa Jewell Where did you get the idea for The Family Remains? Here, we chat with the novelist about finally writing a sequel and how her writing has evolved having now published 20 books. What follows is a shocking and unputdownable story about obsession, marriage and fractured families that, in typical Jewell fashion, will stay with you long after you read the last page. The police think they have it figured out but Rachel knows something they don’t: Lucy Lamb (one of the OG siblings from The Family Upstairs and Michael’s ex-wife) was the last person to see Michael alive, and Rachel sets out on a hunt for the truth-and for Lucy. The book starts with a phone call: Rachel Rimmer’s husband, Michael, has been found dead in the cellar of his French home.

That tale is The Family Remains, which hits shelves on August 9. I started writing it two years after that.” “About six months after The Family Upstairs was published, I finally decided I’d go back in. The writer resisted for as long as she could, but then a spark of an idea hit her and she realized that not only could she write a sequel to the book, it was a story she actually wanted to write. “I wrote a sequel to my first novel, Ralph’s Party, about 10 years ago, and it wasn’t a happy experience.”īut there was just something about The Family Upstairs-Jewell’s 2019 novel about three siblings with unsettling childhoods who come back together after more than two decades when the youngest inherits the family home-that had readers constantly asking for one. “I really didn’t want to write one for a very long time,” she tells The Kit over email.

Bestselling British author Lisa Jewell, who’s known best for tantalizing and twisty thrillers like Then She Was Gone and The Family Upstairs, does not write sequels.

Book the family remains