“When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it’s like I go back into the dream.”
Lisa Jewell is a British New York Times and Sunday Times number one bestselling author, and one of the most renowned thriller writers in the world. After being made redundant from her job in fashion retail, she accepted a challenge from her friend, Yasmin Boland, to write three chapters of a novel in exchange for a meal at her favourite restaurant. These chapters would develop into her first book, Ralph’s Party, which would go on to become the UK’s bestselling book in 1999. Since then, Jewell has written over twenty novels which have been published in over twenty-five languages. If you’re a big fan of crime thrillers and psychological mysteries, join us at What We Reading for all the best Lisa Jewell books in one place!
None Of This Is True (2023)
Kicking off our list of the best Lisa Jewell books is her 2023 thriller, None of This Is True. Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local bar, true crime podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with a woman named Josie Fair. Though unassuming, it turns out that Josie is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. The pair bump into each other again a few days later outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie tells Alix that she has been listening to her podcast and that she may be an interesting subject for her next episode.
Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, but Alix can’t resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Then, as suddenly as she appeared, Josie vanished. It turns out she had been hiding a number of very dark secrets, and has left behind a terrible legacy. Alix soon finds herself as the subject of her own podcast with the lives of herself and her family suddenly at stake.
Check Out The Best Books Like None Of This Is True
The Night She Disappeared (2021)
2017: Nineteen-year-old Tallulah is going out on a date, leaving her baby with her mother, Kim. Kim watches her daughter leave and, as the late evening gives way to the night and then the early morning, waits for her return. The next morning, Kim phones Tallulah’s friends who inform her that her daughter was last seen going to a house party near a place in the nearby woods known as Dark Place.
2019: Sophie is walking in the woods close to the boarding school. Her boyfriend has just started working at the school as its head teacher. Suddenly, she sees a note pinned to a tree saying: ‘Dig Here’. The Night She Disappeared is a 2021 mystery-thriller by Lisa Jewell featuring cold cases, abandoned mansions, family trauma and plenty of sinister secrets waiting to be uncovered.
Then She Was Gone (2017)
In 2017s, Then She Was Gone Lisa Jewell introduces readers to Laurel, a mother whose fifteen-year-old daughter, Ellie, disappeared ten years ago. Despite it being a decade, however, she has never given up hope of finding her.
One day, a charismatic and charming stranger named Floyd swans into the cafe where Laurel works and sweeps her off her feet. Before long, she’s spending the nights at his house and meeting his nine-year-old daughter, Poppy. This little girl is adorable and pretty, but meeting her completely takes Laurel’s breath away. Because Poppy is Ellie’s spitting image when she was that age. The encounter is enough for all the unanswered questions from the past to come flooding back to Laurel. What happened to Ellie? Where did she go? And who still has secrets left to hide?
The Family Upstairs (2019)
Another one of the most famous Lisa Jewell books, The Family Upstairs begins with Libby Jones returning home from work soon after her twenty-fifth birthday to find the letter she had been waiting all her life for. She rips it open with a single thought in her mind: finally discovering who she is.
She discovers not only the identity of her birth parents but also that she’s the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the River Thames in the heart of London’s affluent Chelsea district. What she doesn’t know is that plenty of others have been waiting for this day too. Twenty-five years ago, police attended 16 Cheyne Walk to find a baby in her crib and three dead bodies, all dressed in black, downstairs next to a hastily scrawled note. The four other children reported to be living in the house were gone. The Family Upstairs is a gripping mystery of three entangled families living in a building housing the darkest of secrets.
Check Out The Best Books Like The Family Upstairs
I Found You (2016)
In East Yorkshire, single mum Alice Lake finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no jacket, no name and no idea of what he is doing there. Against her better judgment, she decides to invite him into her home.
In Surrey, twenty-one-year-old Lily Monrose is a newlywed, having tied the knot only three weeks ago. But, when her new husband doesn’t return home from work one evening, she finds herself stranded in a new country with no one she knows for support. That’s when the police inform her that her husband never existed. Lisa Jewell’s I Found You is a mystery book about two women, two decades’ worth of secrets and a man at the heart of it all who can’t remember.
Invisible Girl (2020)
Owen Pick’s life is crumbling around him. A virgin in his thirties living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just lost his job as a teacher on the back of accusations of sexual misconduct being labelled against him. Looking for help online, he stumbles down the dark rabbit hole of incels and meets the charismatic and mysterious Bryn. Across the road from Owen lives the Fours family, headed by Cate, a physiotherapist, and Roan, a child psychologist.
Meanwhile, Saffyre Maddox spent three years as Roan Fours’ patient. Feeling abandoned when their sessions come to an end, she begins following him to keep the connection between them alive. But, as she watches from the shadows, she begins to learn more and more unsettling things about the family. Then, she disappears. The last person to see her alive was Owen Pick. Invisible Girl is a 2020 book by Lisa Jewell that delves into the various fronts we put on in front of the ones we love, and the ones we have online.
Watching You (2018)
Another one of the bestselling Lisa Jewell books that features stalking, secrets and things going awry behind closed affluent doors is her 2018 story, Watching You. Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Bristol, housing old-money intellectuals, doctors and lawyers. Whilst it isn’t the sort of place where someone could be murdered inside their own home, it is a place where everyone has a secret. And everyone is watching you.
Tom Fitzwilliam is the local headmaster and beloved by his community, especially Joey Mullen, who quickly develops an intense infatuation with this unavailable suitor. Joey thinks her ‘crush’ is a secret, but is unaware Tom’s teenage son, Freddie, has witnessed her strange behaviour. Meanwhile, one of Tom’s students is convinced that the teacher isn’t as clean-cut as he first appears. Accusations of stalking, inappropriate behaviour and messages left from the past point to this English teacher having several skeletons in his closet.
The House We Grew Up In (2013)
The Bird Family live in a honey-coloured house in a picturesque English Cotswolds village with rambling unkempt gardens stretching beyond. Meg, Beth and twins Rory and Rhys all attend the same school and eat hand-prepared meals every evening. Their father is a sweet man named Colin, and their mother is a beautiful hippie named Lorelei who flutters from each moment to the next.
Then, one Easter weekend, a tragedy rips through the family that is so devastating it threatens to send them all spiralling apart. Years pass as the children grow into adults, finding new relationships and cobbling together their individual lives. But something soon calls them back to the house they grew up in, and what really happened that Easter weekend all those years ago. One of the best Lisa Jewell books, if you’re looking for something different to her psychological and crime thrillers, The House We Grew Up In, is a captivating tale of a family’s search for peace and the many secrets we keep tucked away inside our homes.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
