Review: “The House We Grew Up In” by Lisa Jewell
Raw and sincere, Lisa Jewell writes another winner with this bestseller-worthy novel…
Many, many thanks to Corsair, the publishers and Najma for the copy of this complex, interesting and amazing book. I was so happy to get my hands on an early copy, because of course, Lisa Jewell is one of the best writes out there for this genre.
A little bit about “The House We Grew Up In”…
Meet the Bird Family
All four children have an idyllic childhood: a picture-book cottage in a country village, a warm, cosy kitchen filled with love and laughter, sun-drenched afternoons in a rambling garden.
But one Easter weekend a tragedy strikes the Bird family that is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear them apart.
The years pass and the children become adults and begin to develop their own quite separate lives. Soon it’s almost as though they’ve never been a family at all.
Almost. But not quite.
Because something has happened that will call them home, back to the house they grew up in – and to what really happened that Easter weekend all those years ago.
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My Review:
All 400+ pages of The House We Grew Up In kept me hooked all the way through. I like to not read a whole book at once to take it in better, and I read this one in just a few days in awe. The time changes were confusing, but nevertheless incredibly written as though the flashbacks glided smoothly into current time.
The lead character, I would say, was the mother of the Bird family; Lorelei Bird. She was friendly and joyful, though swept up in a world of hoarding and that made her neglectful to her family; which was most probably her downfall overall. My thought is that, if she hadn’t been a hoarder, or so consumed with it, that she might have been able to save her family from disastrous scenarios, and sometimes disturbing times.
The Bird family were a troubled and broken family where most of the time, the blame ricocheted around to each family member, who passed it to another and so on, because no one really wanted to be to blame for anything. Their story was slow paced, which was better to take it all in, with thought-provoking and reflectiveness being one of the highlights of the story. It was a dramatic and tragic story, like a rollercoaster of emotions that took you on a ride of happy, then sad, and insightfulness.
Lisa Jewell wrote such a page-turner with this plot, with it’s originality being the most eye-opening. I would completely recommend this–and any of her novels to anyone. I own at least three of her previous novels to date and have loved each one just like this. Not being spoiler-ish, but I was extremely content with the ending and the way things tied up neatly.
Overall, an incredible novel from an amazing author with a huge four stars.
I hope you enjoyed my review & will pick up a copy at your nearest bookstore on July 18th and onwards!
happy reading,
xo Becca
