by Lisa Jewell
First published 2014
The Birds seem like the perfect family in their golden stone cottage in the Cotswolds. Colin, gangly and boyish with his round glasses, works while his free-spirited wife Lorelei fills their days with magic. Their four children thrive in this warm chaos: practical Meg, dreamy Beth, and the blond twins Rory and Rhys. They gather for dinner each night in their rambling house with its wild gardens. Then Easter weekend arrives and brings catastrophe. The tragedy strikes so hard it slowly pulls the family apart, thread by thread. The children grow up and scatter, building separate lives far from home. Years pass until they barely remember being a family at all. But something eventually draws them back to that honey-colored house and forces them to face what really happened during that devastating Easter. The siblings must confront the secrets that have festered in every corner of their childhood home if they want any chance of finding their way back to each other.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Cotswolds, England
Period: contemporary
400 pages · ebook · Atria Books
Content warnings: mental-illness