What do readers think of The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell? Write your own review.

This book opens with what appears to be a happy family having an Easter egg hunt. As the novel progresses, the reader sees the family fall apart after a horrible tragedy occurs on another Easter Sunday. The family ends up with the mother as a hoarder, the father in a strange relationship, one daughter who is very uptight, one who refuses to grow up and a son who disappears into the drug world. Any more information than that would give away too much of the story. The story line moves ahead by skipping back and forth from the past to the present and alternating family members but it is not difficult to follow the action. I found the story very very sad but very compelling. It was hard to put down because I cared about the characters and wanted to find out who they all survived their tumultuous lives and I really wanted to know if they found their way back to being a family again. This is a wonderful novel - well written with well defined characters. I would highly recommend it.

I found this book to be almost depressing. The mother in the book was a hoarder and I thought the author went on far too long getting that description across to the reader. The further I got into the book, the less interested in the family dynamics I became. Each member of the family had problems which seemed insurmountable. The ending seemed to point a glimmer of hope toward improvement for the family, but it seemed a bit happy and optimistic given the story. I did appreciate the author's insight into why people are hoarders - a behavior I never understood. I don't know how universal the cause the author attributed to the hoarding character, but at least the reader could understand the mother's motivation in this case. I don't think I would have stuck with this book if I hadn't been reviewing it.

You absolutely do not want the Bird family to move in next door to you. It is best to meet them in Lisa Jewell's entertaining novel. Meg has a crazy mother who hoards, a passive father who has inappropriate relationships, a troubled brother who leaves the country, and a too nice sister. It is both interesting and sad to observe this family fall apart while cheering them on as they re-build their lives. It would be a good selection for book groups as there are many topics to discuss.

I was tempted, after about one hundred pages to walk away from the book and not finish it. The characters seemed flat and uninteresting, as if there wasn't a compelling reason to get to know them any better.

I persevered and then realized that I wanted to find out more......This book is a reminder of how flawed families can be. It redeemed itself at the end, when everyone stopped behaving like children and stepped up to adulthood.

I received this book as an early reviewer, and I have never read anything by this author before. I will now! We meet a family who is perfect, a husband and wife who love each other, and four children, two girls and twin boys. The Bird family love Easter, and really do it up well each year, until 1991. Things were never the same after that day, and 20 years later circumstances bring all of the children back to the cottage again. This book deals with relationship between siblings, lovers, parents, mental health, hoarding, life and death. I really liked this book, as it went from the past to the present, filling in what happened in the past, and how it is affecting the now. I will be looking for more of Lisa’s books!

I received this book as an early reviewer, and I have never read anything by this author before. I will now! We meet a family who is perfect, a husband and wife who love each other, and four children, two girls and twin boys. The Bird family love Easter, and really do it up well each year, until 1991. Things were never the same after that day, and 20 years later circumstances bring all of the children back to the cottage again. This book deals with relationship between siblings, lovers, parents, mental health, hoarding, life and death. I really liked this book, as it went from the past to the present, filling in what happened in the past, and how it is affecting the now. I will be looking for more of Lisa's books!

I loved this book and couldn't put it down. Lisa Jewell has written another great novel with characters that are so real you can feel their thoughts and emotions. The story revolves around a seriously flawed mother and a tragedy that devastates everyone. What at first seems like a story you've read before keeps unfolding in surprising and brilliant ways. There's so much depth, heartbreak and fascinating insights into what makes people act the way they do. There's also so much love and joy and beauty and kindness packed into this wonderful book. Read it. These character will stay with you long after. I wanted to keep living with this family and wished I could keep reading.

I liked and hated this book in pretty much equal measure. The family in question has a hoarder for a mother, a wimp for a father, and four completely different offspring. All of them are devastated by a tragedy that occurs on an Easter Sunday, and the book takes us through the many years that follow, and the effect the tragedy -- as well as the extant problems -- has on the family.
The story reminded me a bit of the movie "August: Osage County" in the depiction of the squabbles and problems of a relatively close-knit family, although the book is set in the Cotswolds and thus we see, to Americans anyway, a "typically" repressed English family.
The book also hit a bit close to home for me, as well; I need to go unpack a whole lot of book boxes that have been sitting in the spare room since my last move!