This is a well-paced thriller that kept me engaged until the very end.
Jane a former foster kid with a rough past is trying to make her way as a dog walker in a rich community. Soon she meets Eddie. Eddie is widowed after his wife Bea and her best friend Blanche die in a mysterious boating accident. Jane and Eddie begin dating but Jane can't seem to get past Bea and her ambitions she had set for Eddie, their thriving company and the neighborhood.

I really enjoyed this one. It was well-paced, easy to follow and the multiple perspectives really added to the novel. I would definitely recommend.

Thank you NetGalley, Rachel Hawkins and St. Martin's Press! All opinions expressed are my own.

Jane finds a fresh start as a dog walker in a wealthy neighbourhood in Alabama. She is trying to escape her past when she meets Eddie, recently widowed, whose wife died mysteriously in a boating accident, along with her friend Blanche. Jane and Eddie start dating, but Jane can't help but feel overshadowed by Bea, who was a beautiful and ambitious entrepreneur, even though she's no longer around.

This was a thrilling and exciting read. When I thought I might have figured it out, I was surprised. I also enjoyed the different narrators; I find the various narrations very helpful especially in thrillers because it gives some insight to the psyche of the different characters.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys mysteries or thrillers.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the eGalley. All opinions expressed are my own.

Wow! My second book, and first really good one, of 2021! This book was great. It follows "Jane," a former foster kid living under a stolen identity, as she navigates her new job as a dog walker for a rich neighborhood. While out walking one of the dogs, she almost gets hit by a car. The driver stops to apologize, and that sets off a chain reaction that I did not see coming.

I give this book 4 stars. The ending was a little open, which I dislike. But I loved everything else about this book. I absolutely loathed John, and Tripp was meh. But I was very drawn into the mystery surrounding Eddie and Bea and Blanche. I wasn't putting a lot of thought into the mystery as I read, so my mindwas open during the big reveal, and I enjoyed it. If you like a good thriller, pick this one up!

What a fast-paced thriller that keeps that momentum going until the last word! I often wonder how authors can distinguish their own plot from the tons of others that have preceded theirs. Yet, the author did just that. The handling of a story where 2 close friends die in a boating accident takes on an originality all its own.
The deceptions galore and the secrets kept by all are in direct contrast to the seemingly bland, cookie-cutter descriptions of the typically well-to-do gated community that inhabit those walls. The ending is left up to you to discern if the characters made it or did not. What's fascinating will be what the reader ultimately decided themselves. Well Done!

This is billed as a retelling of Jane Eyre but I saw it less as a take on that gothic love-triangle and more of its own entertaining domestic thriller with colorful characters whose motives aren't always what they seem.

I loved the world Hawkins built in Birmingham, Alabama's Thornfield Estates where newcomer Jane walks rich people's dogs. The women, the houses, the silly committees - it felt like something out of a Housewives episode and I mean that as the highest compliment. As Jane observed "Women here always dress like flowers in the summer, bright splashes of color against the violently green lawns, the blindingly blue sky. It's so different from how things were back East, where I grew up. There, black was always the chicest color. Here I think people would wear lavender to a funeral. Poppy-red to a wedding." Jane eventually becomes involved with Eddie Rochester, one of her clients, whose wife, Bea, has mysteriously disappeared with her best friend, Blanche. As Jane takes over Bea's place in Eddie's life, she attempts to fit in with the other Thornfield residents while also starting to question Eddie's role in the women's disappearance, leaving Jane to wonder whether her perfect new life is with a killer.

There are some good twists in the book and surprisingly, I laughed quite a bit like when Jane says about Blanche's husband "Tripp is so many ugly things - a drunk, a lech, a Republican - but murderer still doesn't fit on him." The book moves quickly and is told from multiple POVs so it kept me guessing. A great, suspenseful read!

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for a copy to review.

A more modern take on Jane Eyre, The Wife Upstairs kept me flipping pages well into the night.

Set in Alabama, in a real housewives like neighborhood, Ms. Hawkins introduces Jane, a down on her luck young woman who spent her formative years in the foster care system. Thornfield Estates feels like a whole other world and Jane is very much an outsider looking in while walking resident’s dogs and pilfering the occasional piece of jewelry in order to get by. Until she meets Edward Rochester and her status and circumstances change.

Yet she is still haunted by the memory of his dead wife, Bea.

This was a well-done mystery. I am a big fan of retellings and this one hit its mark perfectly. The pacing kept me thoroughly engaged and the twists and turns had me on the edge of my seat. I can’t say that I really liked any of the characters, both primary and secondary… but I don’t think I was supposed to.

Overall, I spent an enjoyable afternoon reading and am glad I picked this book for review.

The Wife Upstairs was a fast, easy read that still managed to keep me guessing! I know this will have a built in audience among our library patrons.

Starting out 2021 with a bang! The Wife Upstairs is a really solid thriller, a combination of Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and Panic Room, with a modern twist on the classic Gothic novel. I enjoyed the holier-than-thou, Southern McMansion setting, which made it stand out from a lot of these psychological thrillers, which are often set either in big, metropolitan cities, or else in the remote countryside. The neighborhood beautification committee and the wealth and hypocrisy of the South gave this a richness and depth that made it compulsively readable and fun. I'll admit, I did guess the final plot twist pretty early on, but I think that's due to my being an avid reader of this genre, not due to the author's lack of plotting.
All of the characters are well developed, though their back stories are perhaps a bit over-the-top. I was partial to Jane's side of the narrative, over Bea's.

If you're a fan of The Undoing, Mary Kubica, or female-centered thrillers, add this to your TBR pile ASAP.

My Review:⭐️⭐⭐⭐/ 5 stars

I love a good re-telling and this one is SO good. It is a modern twist to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. This story takes place at Thornfield Estates (think of those Real Housewives tv shows) - all wealthy with fancy McMansions, luxury cars, and more jewelry than they know what to do with. Jane is a dog walker for this community, and eventually meets Eddie Rochester, a mysterious widower, whose wife Bea and her best friend Blanche disappeared from a boating accident months before. Presumed both dead, Eddie seems ready to move on when he starts to date Jane, who is running from her own past and in need of stability and love. The more time she spends with Eddie at his home, the more she compares herself to Bea and there are very odd sounds in the house she can’t quite figure out. It's pretty obvious what the sounds are because the POV shifts between Jane and Bea mostly…

The pace for this thriller is just perfect. Short chapters made reading it a breeze and you are constantly on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens - even if you kind of can guess what happens - there is a twist! The ending had me satisfied, but still wanting more - and wondering what really happened. It is a re-telling, but also done in such a way that seems original in its own right. Highly recommended for the avid thriller reader!

Thank you to St Martin's Press and Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. I loved it so much I also bought the Book of the Month edition.

US Pub date: January 5, 2021!

Twists and turns galore! None of the main characters are perfect or even very likable, which was unique. I love not being able to accurately predict what will happen in a novel, and this one caught me by surprise more than once! A good suspense read.

I didn't think I'd like this book. It felt like it was going to be one of those with the "girl" or "woman" or "wife" in the title. But it was quite a good twist on Jane Eyre and enjoyable.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced reader copy!

I was very intrigued by the title and the plot of this book. At first, if he book seemed pretty predictable as we learn about Jane, Eddie and Bea. Nothing really shocked me as we learn more about the night Bea and her best friend went missing. I felt confident that what I was reading was the truth, which was, like I said, predictable.

But then as I was getting closer to the end of the book, I did a double take on a set of words and everything I thought was true all of a sudden wasn’t. I couldn’t get enough of the end of this book and was completely shocked.

If you like an unpredictable thriller, this book is for you!

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins is a little suspenseful, but definitely a page turner. I enjoyed this book, but found it somewhat predictable. I enjoyed the authors writing style and the way she tells a story.

This was not at all what I had anticipated. The twists and turns kept me turning the pages and I appreciated the author's writing style. It was an engaging thriller and I highly recommend it! It was definitely an enjoyable read!

I have seen this book everywhere, and it's even made some top 10 lists of 2020, despite it not even being published yet! I was captivated by the fact it was a flipped script of Jane Eyre, so I simply had to read it. This book, while it didn't have a huge amount of twists, and some fairly consistent foul language, had me hooked from the beginning. When Jane progresses from dogwalker to fiancee of Eddie in a well-heeled neighborhood of Alabama, things seem to be going just fine for her. But her errant past, as well as the complicated past relationships between neighbors and friends eventually catch up to everyone, leading to a catastrophic ending. Very well done!

This book grabbed my attention from the start and never let go. Jane is a dog walker in an upscale southern neighborhood. During one of her walks, she meets Eddie and a fast love affair begins. While Jane and Eddie hit it off from the start, the women in the neighborhood are not as accepting of the former dog-walker becoming one of their own. Jane has secrets in her past and wants to do everything she can to fit in so she can leave it completely behind her. Little does she know there are other secrets in the neighborhood. Eddie lost his wife and her best friend to a tragic boating accident less than a year before he meets Jane and their bodies were never recovered. Jane begins to wonder if someone does know what happened out on that boat after all.

A modern re-telling of Jane Eyre set in southern Alabama, The Wife Upstairs is a fantastic mystery to lose an afternoon in. It reads quickly and is tough to put down. So many people are hiding versions of themselves it becomes tough to know which way is up and you find yourself guessing at bits and pieces right along with Jane. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good mystery or contemporary suspense novel.

OᐯᗴᖇᐯIᗴᗯ: Jane is looking for a new life, and she finds it working as a dog walker in an affluent neighborhood. She meets Eddie, a widower whose wife died in a boating accident with her best friend. Jane and Eddie get closer, but she always feels like she’s in the shadow of the beloved Bea. When she starts to suspect someone from the neighborhood knows more about the accident then they are saying, Jane sets out to find out the truth and gets a surprise she could never have expected.

ᗰY TᕼOᑌᘜᕼTᔕ: This book kept me on the edge of my seat! The first big “twist” happened pretty early and is probably something that I should’ve guessed, but it completely threw me. I love that! From that point on, I was hooked and trying to guess what the next big twist was. This is suspense in the best way!

ᖇᗩTIᑎᘜ: ★★★★★

This was a great read. Just from the title alone, I was intrigued. So as you know from the blurb what this book is about it but it is so much more. The twists and turns just keep on coming. Blanche and Bea, that is one story and then there is Bea’s story, Eddie’s wife. What a web of deceit. As you keep on reading, the tension and suspense increases with ever chapter. By the halfway point of the book, it was a race for me to finish the book and truly figure out the truth which I had an inkling what is was. I highly recommend this book if you are a fan of psychological thrillers with twists and turns throughout. I want to thank net galley and the publisher for the ARC I received for an honest review. This is a must read book for readers who love this genre of books, a true psychological thriller.

This is a book that I am not sure how to rate. It’s well written and sometime creepy modern take on Jane Eyre. Initially, I stopped reading the book because I didn't like the main character Jane, whose eyes we are seeing most of the story through. I picked it up again and read the rest of the book in one day. It's a compelling read that I didn't want to put down. Former foster child Jane walks dogs in the upscale Thornfield Estates. The women of the neighborhood look down at her, but she gets them back and supplements her income by stealing their jewelry. Jane catches the eye of widower Eddie Rochester, whose wife Bea went missing a year ago. Jane wants the lifestyle that Eddie could give her. Both of them have secrets. I received a free copy of this ebook from the publisher through Netgalley. This is my honest and voluntarily given review. I like the flashbacks shown through Jane's, Eddie's, and Bea's eyes. This adds so much to the story. It kept me guessing about the night that Eddie's wife went missing. I also like how the book ends. I didn't like Jane, Eddie, or Bea. They are not people that I would want to know. The secondary characters are not likeable as well. It's the twists and turns that make this story so good.

Jane Eyre is my favorite novel.. I have read the novel, listened to various narrators read it in audiobooks, and watched every movie adaptation I have found. The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins was my first "retelling" of it. I was a little confused by it at first....I mean right out of the gate its clear that Jane is not at all likeable in this story. She is scrappy and resilient, like the original Jane, but not particularly admirable. The Eddie Rochester character in this novel is not nearly as dark and brooding as his namesake.

At first, I had to get past my expectations of The Wife Upstairs being a literal retelling just set in Alabama in the present. It is not. In fact, after finishing it today, I would say it is more or less a wink and a nod toward Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Once I did that, I was able to enjoy The Wife Upstairs as a modern domestic thriller. The writing reminded me a lot of Joshilyn Jackson's Never Have I Ever...only with a lot more F-Bombs thrown in. (I'll be honest, though I am known to drop an F-bomb myself on occasion, I do think they have more impact when fewer in number. The author used that specific curse so frequently, I wondered if she had just needed it to boost her word count....very distracting.)

As a modern thriller, I loved the side story with Bea and Blanch. I loved how their story was woven throughout the novel's plot and ultimately made it all come together. While I usually prefer to have a character or two that I am really rooting for, I was fine with not having that in this novel. It sort of gave me freedom to know I would likely enjoy the ending, no matter how it had turned out. Eddie and Jane nor Eddie and Bea are a romance for the ages. But they make for a fun bit of escapism. The money that gets thrown around and the neighbors that are supporting characters are entertaining sides that give the story a bit of a "Real Housewives of Alabama" flare.

This is a novel that will satisfy readers who just want a fun novel that is full is dysfunctional relationships and characters. It will disappoint Jane Eyre enthusiasts who are expecting a faithful retelling. If they can get past that, they might appreciate seeing the parallels between the modern characters and the originals that they were inspired by. This comparison would make a good book discussion while the book itself might not otherwise be a typical book club choice.