The Lambs' two teenage children and several others were unaccounted for. By that point, Henry, Sr., was wheelchair-bound. Through Libby's current-day perspective, it is revealed in an article written by Miller Roe that Henry, Sr., Martina, and another man were found deceased inside the home in 1994 as the result of what looked like a cult-based suicide pact. They were only supposed to stay for a few days, but it turned into a more permanent living situation. Problems developed for the family when a woman named Birdie came with her band to film a music video inside the house. The house was lavish, but the items were merely a way for the Lambs to cover up their unhappiness.

Martina was a beautiful socialite, and Henry, Sr., inherited a sizable fortune from his father. He and his father (Henry Lamb, Sr.), mother (Martina), and sister (who is revealed at the end of the novel to be Lucy) lived in the posh Cheyne Walk house that Libby is currently set to inherit. The third main protagonist (who also serves as something of an antagonist as the novel progresses) is Henry, who relates to the reader how his life changed for the worse in the 1980s. Lucy gets a reminder on her phone that the baby is 25 now, which immediately connects the two women for the reader. Stella's father was the love of Lucy's life but abandoned them to return to his home country. Meanwhile, in France, the second main protagonist, Lucy Lamb, is homeless with her two children (Marco and Stella) and their dog, Fitz. Libby is riddled with disbelief at first, and her whole life is turned upside-down. She has recently turned 25 and stands to inherit a large house on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, London, England. Libby Jones is then introduced as one of the three main protagonists. Things changed when a baby came into the picture, at which time Henry was 16 and his sister was 14. Henry tells the reader that his childhood went from somewhat abnormal to becoming extremely dark. The novel begins with a brief, half-page prologue narrated by Henry (although the narrator's identity is not divulged until later). Each of the four parts contains their own rising climax and big reveal, leading up to the convergence of these three characters in the end of the book. While the chapters set in the third-person perspectives of Libby Jones and Lucy Lamb are in the present tense, the majority of those narrated in first-person by Henry Lamb, Jr., are set in the past tense as he recounts events that happened between 19. Jewell divides The Family Upstairs into a prologue plus four parts: Part I (Chapter 1 through Chapter 33), Part II (Chapter 34 through Chapter 48), Part II (Chapter 49 through Chapter 65), and Part IV (Chapter 66 through Chapter 69).

The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Jewell, Lisa.

The family upstairs pages