The House We Grew Up In
The unputdownable mystery from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Don’t Let Him In
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4.1 • 493 Ratings
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
An unforgettable story about a family with a terrible secret. From the #1 bestselling author of The Family Upstairs and None of This is True comes a new edition of The House We Grew Up In, with a brand new introduction from Lisa Jewell!
'Unputdownable' RED
'Simply stunning' Daily Mail
'Fantastically gripping' HELLO!
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When a tragedy breaks a family apart, what can bring it back together?
The Birds seem to be the perfect family: mother, father, four children, a charming cottage in the country.
But one Easter weekend, something happens - something so unexpected, so devastating, that no one can bring themselves to talk about it.
The family shatters, seemingly for good.
Until, years later, they are forced to return to the house they grew up in, and to confront what really broke the family apart . . .
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Readers can't get enough of The House We Grew Up In:
***** 'I could NOT put it down!'
***** 'A captivating page-turner'
***** 'It's one of the very best books I've read this year.'
***** 'A fantastic novel'
***** 'Lisa Jewel is an amazing writer'
***** 'Brilliant and fantastically written!'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jewell's most recent novel (after Before I Met You) is a melodrama starring the Bird clan: happy-go-lucky mother Lorelai, patient father Colin, headstrong eldest child Meg, meek Beth, and dissimilar twins Rory and Rhys. "They lived in a honey-colored house that sat hard up against the pavement of a picture-perfect Cotswolds village and stretched out beyond into three-quarters of an acre of rambling half-kempt gardens." The narrative alternates between 2011 and flashbacks to the kids' childhoods, and the reader sees Lorelai's eccentricities (including her propensity for hoarding) gradually begin to weigh her family down. Easter is Lorelai's favorite holiday, replete with massive egg hunts and festivities, but when a catastrophe occurs, it forever alters the course of the Birds' lives. Each member of the family begins to drift away from the others, and the subsequent years find them dealing with affairs, abandonment, and death. Years later, following another loss, the family once again gathers and is forced to confront its troubled past. Jewell keeps the reader engrossed with her characters' winding, divergent paths.
Customer Reviews
An intense read
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Found it ‘different’ to anything read before. In depth characters evolving from a hoarders massive problem. I thought I was a bit of a sentimental hoarder until I read this, it’s off the scale for mess!
Loved the mystery part of Rhys’s suicide and the build up to it.
Brilliant!
This book - not sure how I missed it when it first came out but oh - it’s brilliant! The best family drama I’ve read in ages. So very real and true. Thank you for writing it, L.J!
Wonderful book!
Pour a cuppa, get comfy and read this most fabulous book. Lisa Jewell is a genius