'UK's greatest export' was new to me — she's so good I read 4 of her books in a month

I read books every day and have done all my life. I love the way books help us in so many ways, whether it’s providing us with the information, education and tools to help improve our lives or providing us with a means to relax, wind down and escape the everyday.

I love fiction and non-fiction books equally for the ways they enrich my life. History books teach me things I didn’t know, self-help and advice books teach me ways I might be able to improve my life and interactions with other people, and fiction allows me to stop thinking about the stresses of everyday life. You can find out what I consider the 10 best books I’ve read in the last 5 years here. And this is by far the best book I’ve ever read. 

Right now, I’m enjoying the escapism of fiction and discovering new authors like Alice Winn and Martin Griffin. But there is one author I am enjoying more than any other at the moment. With more than 15 million books sold, Lisa Jewell could hardly be described a little-known or upcoming author. She is an established New York Times best-seller, a big hitter with 23 novels to her name, each translated into several different languages. She’s been described as the “UK’s greatest export” for lovers of mystery thriller books.

But somehow, despite being an avid reader, I hadn’t come across her or her books until I was recommended one by a colleague. I raced through it, devoured three more in a month and then a fifth. I don’t think I’ve ever read so quickly,with Jewell’s easy writing style combining perfectly with her unique, intense, fast-moving and sometimes downright terrifying plots. In turn, I recommended her to a colleague — she was as gripped as me and said she’d never spent as long on a treadmill while listening to one of Jewell’s audiobooks!

Here are the five books I’ve enjoyed so much, each one as gripping as the last. And for more book recommendations, reviews and news, click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter, The Bookish Drop, on Substack.

This brilliant book centres on an abandoned mansion in Chelsea, London, where the bodies of three adults were discovered alongside a healthy baby in a cot, alive and seemingly well looked after. When that baby inherits the house 25 years later, she sets about uncovering its dark past. The book jumps between the present and past, with a great twist. You can buy it on Amazon here or at Waterstones here.

This thriller tells the story of Laurel Mack, a mum who is grieving after the sudden disappearance of her youngest daughter, Ellie. Years later, with Ellie’s disappearance still a mystery, she meets a handsome and seemingly perfect man in a cafe and goes on to start a relationship with him. Then she meets his nine-year-old daughter and the first thing that strikes her is how much she looks like her missing daughter. From that point on, I was completely and utterly hooked and could not turn the pages fast enough. You can buy it on Amazon here or at Waterstones here.

On a summer night, 19-year-old Tallulah and her boyfriend, Zach, go missing after going to a house party at a large mansion outside their village. A year later, with the couple’s disappearance still a mystery, a writer named Sophie, who has moved to the area with her boyfriend, discovers a sign saying “Dig Here” at the bottom of her garden, seemingly freshly written. She does as the sign instructs, and begins to unravel the mystery of what happened to Tallulah and Zach that night. You can buy it on Amazon here or at Waterstones here.

Two middle-aged women with families meet by chance in a bar where they bond over their shared birthday. Josie, seeking a new direction in life, convinces Alix to do a podcast based on her life, which, it soon becomes obvious, is dark and unsettling. But by now, both women are enmeshed in each other’s lives to a chilling extent. You can buy it on Amazon here or at Waterstones here.

The sequel to The Family Upstairs continues the story of the characters we were introduced to three years earlier in The Family Upstairs. It opens with the discovery of the remains of a body in a bag in the Thames. Soon, a detective is connecting them to a cold case that left three people dead on the kitchen floor in a Chelsea mansion thirty years ago. Lisa Jewell has said she doesn’t like writing sequels. Thank goodness she did. This is just as thrilling as the book that got me hooked in the first place.