The Family Upstairs: A Review

I had a hold on Libby for this book for months. I read many raving reviews, lots of my favorite Twitter reviewers loved it, so I was excited when this popped in my inbox over the weekend.

However.

Everyone has that one book they disagree with the masses, and I'm afraid The Family Upstairs was that book for me. I just could not get into this one. From lengthy flashbacks to characters I really could never relate to, the book read dense and surface level, in spite of the potential for an interesting plot and unraveling.

To be fair, I read Ocean at the End of the Lane a few weeks ago and that had a similar overall structure, so that could've skewed my impression, but I found myself skimming more paragraphs than actually absorbing them, and when the anticlimactic climax finally happened, the payout was not what I was expecting.

I wanted to like this more, but this missed the mark in my opinion.