The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell is a book about family, specifically the Bird family, and how instantly it was destroyed by death. From the exterior, the Bird family appears to be a normal, happy, hippie family. Lorelei and Colin Bird have a tradition of having an Easter egg hunt every year for their 4 children. But one of their kids, Rhys, hangs himself in his bedroom on Easter holiday. His death not only devastated the family, but broke the bond between its members. Lorelei begins to have a hoarding addiction, refusing to let anyone touch Rhys’ belongings and leaves his room untouched for 20 years. His mother’s hoarding addiction gets worse over the years, while slowly falling out of love with her husband, Colin. Colin has an affair with another woman and leaves Lorelei. For years, Lorelei is left alone in her home, as the trash keeps piling up around her. She resorts to technology, and talks to a man named Jim online. She quickly confides in him, revealing to him her darkest secrets, and eventually tells him what led Rhys to kill himself. But her attention to her and Jim’s conversations leads her away from her reality. Her house is dangerously cluttered with trash she’s kept for 10 years. She dies in her own home. After the ambulance takes her body away from the hazardous home, Meg insists on exploring the house. The house she grew up in. She sees years worth of memories and realizes how far the family has strayed away from the others. Meg starts to heal the family, using Rhys and Lorelei’s death as main motivation, and eventually they have Easter egg hunts, 20 years after Rhys’ death. I thought this book had many surprises, and it especially surprised me at the end of the book when I realized how far this family had come. They were destroyed by their son’s death, and fell apart. But with their mother’s death, they came together again. Future readers should definitely be prepared for what comes for this family. As well as be prepared for what exactly killed Rhys.
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