Rating: ⭐⭐✨⬜⬜
Title: The Wife Upstairs
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Genre: Fiction / Thriller
Author Info: She/Her
Setting: Birmingham, Alabama
Month Read: March, 2021
Book Type: Hardcover
Publication: 2021
Pages: 290
*March Books & Brews Book Club Pick
TRIGGER WARNING-
Abduction / Murder / Sexual Themes
"The stressful part is always making the decision. Once you've made it, it's done, and you feel better" - Ch. 36
No Spoiler Summary:
The Wife Upstairs is a modern day retelling of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre set in a fictional suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. The book hops between narration of the 3 main characters, letting you into their most innermost thoughts, desires, and secrets.
Jane is young, poor, and strategical. Eddie is a rich, widowed, eligible bachelor. They meet when Jane is walking a neighbor's dog, and sparks fly instantly- but what happens when the person you're with isn't the person you think they are?
Jane spends most of the novel haunted by Eddie's late wife, Bea, and the mystery that surrounds her death. As Jane befriends the gossipy, bored neighborhood wives she learns more than she wanted to know about the woman whose house she inhabits, whose husband she is dating, and whose life she is slowly being consumed by. What happened to Bea, and her best friend out on the lake?
Review:
Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels of all time, and I was psyched to read this after hearing months of hype about how good this book was. I was pleasantly surprised by the little nods to my favorite novel (The first sentences being almost identical, keeping the names the same, and keeping a lot of plot points modernized, but very similar.)
A quick read that can be done in a sitting or two, but bland and boring if you've read the original text- The Wife Upstairs will not be joining the ranks of Jane Eyre in the list of favorite novels. It was good in the sense that it would make a good beach read, but I'm not better off for having read it, and will likely never read it again.
I'm wondering if the book would have been better if I didn't know the huge twist, but book club attendees that didn't know the twist didn't seem to love it any more. Having read that the author thought that this book was her giving Jane Eyre the ending she deserved (in the author notes)--- I'm lost as to how Ms. Hawkins thinks that this ending was better.
None of the characters were likable to me, and I don't think any of them got what they truly deserved in the end. I don't want to spoil anything for those who want to read it, and I'd love to see what anyone else has to say about this.
I wish that the main twist wasn't the literal title of the novel. If you love Jane Eyre, you know who is upstairs- but for those who haven't read it- did the title sort of ruin this for you? Was it intriguing? Let me know!
"I'd always been the type to seize on opportunities that presented themselves, rather than the person to go out and make those opportunities happen." - Ch. 33
Recommendations:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë for the source material (and a fantastic read)
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides for one of my favorite thrillers of the past few years, with twists on twists that you WON'T see coming.
The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen for a good beach read thriller, a new wife, an old wife, and the secrets and jealousy woven in-between.