About the Book:
“Clever, intelligent…wonderful” (Jojo Moyes, New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You).
Meet the Bird family. They live in a honey-colored house in a picture-perfect Cotswolds village, with rambling, unkempt gardens stretching beyond. Pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and tow-headed twins Rory and Rhys all attend the village school and eat home-cooked meals together every night. Their father is a sweet gangly man named Colin, who still looks like a teenager with floppy hair and owlish, round-framed glasses. Their mother is a beautiful hippy named Lorelei, who exists entirely in the moment. And she makes every moment sparkle in her children’s lives.
Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they’ve never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grewup in—and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.
Told in gorgeous, insightful prose that delves deeply into the hearts and minds of its characters, The House We Grew Up In is the captivating story of one family’s desire to restore long-forgotten peace and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.
THE HOUSE WE GREW UP IN by Lisa Jewell
Atria Books | Hardcover | Fiction | On Sale Date: 08/12/14
ISBN: 9781476702995 | Pages: 400 | eBook ISBN: 9781476703015
Review:
I had no idea what I was getting into with this book. I liked the cover, it's about a family with issues. Good enough for me. It is really about the perfect-looking family that cracked in the most unbelievable ways and then found their way back together in very different ways.
I loved the writing style, down to Earth, easy to read, every character had their own voice. There were many characters and jumps through time, and yet I was not that confused. When the Bird family starts out, they seem perfectly normal. Lorelai, the mother a free-spirit who like to keep things around her to preserve memories, Colin, the level-headed father and four children. Two girls, two boys, Megan the opposite of her mother, serious and clean, Bethan, beautiful and faithful, and twin boys Rory and Rhys, polar opposites, Rory popular and outspoken, Rhys quiet and misunderstood. One Easter, all of their world's will be changed and the perfect Bird family will go on their imperfect, separate ways.
Since the writing jumps back and forth through time, we know that things go very wrong early on. We know that the family is estranged. The point of the story is to see why everything collapsed and how everyone came back together. The different points of view made it really interesting for me. There were also many different issues covered, mental illness, suicide, adultery, homosexuality, drugs and of course, forgiveness. This is definitely one to read if you think that your family is messed up. The only thing more I wanted out of this book was a little more from Rhys' point of view to really tie things together.
This book was provided for free in return for an honest review.
“Clever, intelligent…wonderful” (Jojo Moyes, New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You).
Meet the Bird family. They live in a honey-colored house in a picture-perfect Cotswolds village, with rambling, unkempt gardens stretching beyond. Pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and tow-headed twins Rory and Rhys all attend the village school and eat home-cooked meals together every night. Their father is a sweet gangly man named Colin, who still looks like a teenager with floppy hair and owlish, round-framed glasses. Their mother is a beautiful hippy named Lorelei, who exists entirely in the moment. And she makes every moment sparkle in her children’s lives.
Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they’ve never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grewup in—and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.
Told in gorgeous, insightful prose that delves deeply into the hearts and minds of its characters, The House We Grew Up In is the captivating story of one family’s desire to restore long-forgotten peace and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.
THE HOUSE WE GREW UP IN by Lisa Jewell
Atria Books | Hardcover | Fiction | On Sale Date: 08/12/14
ISBN: 9781476702995 | Pages: 400 | eBook ISBN: 9781476703015
Review:
I had no idea what I was getting into with this book. I liked the cover, it's about a family with issues. Good enough for me. It is really about the perfect-looking family that cracked in the most unbelievable ways and then found their way back together in very different ways.
I loved the writing style, down to Earth, easy to read, every character had their own voice. There were many characters and jumps through time, and yet I was not that confused. When the Bird family starts out, they seem perfectly normal. Lorelai, the mother a free-spirit who like to keep things around her to preserve memories, Colin, the level-headed father and four children. Two girls, two boys, Megan the opposite of her mother, serious and clean, Bethan, beautiful and faithful, and twin boys Rory and Rhys, polar opposites, Rory popular and outspoken, Rhys quiet and misunderstood. One Easter, all of their world's will be changed and the perfect Bird family will go on their imperfect, separate ways.
Since the writing jumps back and forth through time, we know that things go very wrong early on. We know that the family is estranged. The point of the story is to see why everything collapsed and how everyone came back together. The different points of view made it really interesting for me. There were also many different issues covered, mental illness, suicide, adultery, homosexuality, drugs and of course, forgiveness. This is definitely one to read if you think that your family is messed up. The only thing more I wanted out of this book was a little more from Rhys' point of view to really tie things together.
This book was provided for free in return for an honest review.
About the Author:
LISA JEWELL was born and raised in north London, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. She is the internationally bestselling author of ten previous novels, including The Making of Us and Before I Met You. One of the UK’s most talented contemporary novelists, she has sold more than 2 million books in the UK and is published in more than twenty countries. To find out more about Lisa, visit www.facebook.com/LisaJewellofficial, or follow her on twitter@lisajewelluk.
LISA JEWELL was born and raised in north London, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. She is the internationally bestselling author of ten previous novels, including The Making of Us and Before I Met You. One of the UK’s most talented contemporary novelists, she has sold more than 2 million books in the UK and is published in more than twenty countries. To find out more about Lisa, visit www.facebook.com/LisaJewellofficial, or follow her on twitter@lisajewelluk.
RSS Feed
