Wow, wow, wow! There was so much packed into this short book. I won't lie, I did pick this book up solely based off the cover. If you know me, I rarely read the synopsis of a book, I do tend to base off the cover. And I'm so, so glad I did! I was spooked, disgusted, annoyed at times, and couldn't read this book fast enough. For this being Lisa's debut novel she knocked it out of the park. The descriptions of the house, the sounds, the smells, it was a wild roller coaster ride to the senses. I know some people were disappointed by one of the big twists in the book, I thought it was extremely clever and didn't disappoint me in the slightest. Then there was another big twist that blew my mind, honestly the whole book blew my mind. I can't wait to read what this author comes up with next. It's a fast read and never lets up on the twists.

And then just like that, this book has been added to my favorite books of all time list!!! 💕💜💙

Happy Pub Day @lisa_m_matlin !!! I just truly can’t express how much I loved this book! It was eerie and spooky at times, you didn’t know which characters to trust, or if they could even trust their reality! The social media parts weren’t over done making it too meta and those were even some of the lighter more funnier parts that broke some tension!

SIMPLY PUT THIS BOOK WAS FANTASTIC! I said it on my insta story right after finishing that I couldn’t believe that this was a debut novel for this author! It was giving seasoned senior author in the same ranks of Lisa Jewell, Ruth Ware, and Alice Feeney!

⭐️⭐️⭐️5⭐️⭐️⭐️

The funniest part of reading this book is that I didn’t even really figure out that it took place in Australia til a few chapters in and I had to use my kindle to define a myriad of words that I had just never heard of, and they kept coming up as “common Australian/New Zealand slang” 😂😂😂 None the less, it was a wonderful reading experience. And it allowed me to gain some new knowledge if I ever get to visit the other side of the world!!

Special thanks to @netgalley @bantambooksuk and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the review copy to read and review before it’s publication date!

#thestrangerupstairs #lisammatlin #bantambooks #randomhouse

I have never read a book that a neighborhood didn't like new neighbors without really knowing them. Didn't really like the characters in this book but that could of been the reason I liked it. The book has it all.

The Stranger Upstairs will give you the creepy crawlies! Its dark story filled with all types of terror and mystery will take the reader down a rabbit hole of fear, suspense, madness and horror. It was delicious!

Sarah Slack a best-selling author and psychologist and her bartender husband Joe decide to buy, renovate and flip a beautiful house in an affluent community. But unfortunately, there is a history to Black Wood House. You see the previous owners were killed. The husband killed his wife then himself as their daughter ran for help. Although the neighbors feel the house should be demolished, Sarah and Joe were able to get the house and its history for a steal.

As Sarah has a plan to blog about the renovations while working as a psychologist, Joe is not so sure about buying this house. He was very set against it. But Sarah feels she and Joe need this. Their marriage is falling apart, and Joe does not want to even try anymore. But both know because of their history, they are stuck with each other. And they are running out of money as they’ve spent most of her book money and even though her second book is due soon; she hasn’t even started writing.

But as they begin the renovations, they both feel the eeriness of the house. Especially Sarah who opts to sleep in the murder bedroom while Joe sleeps on the couch. Sarah starts of hear noises and footsteps. She tries to introduce herself to the neighbors who don’t want anything to do with them. She’s even chastised for buying the house.

Then, she realizes someone has been inside the house, leaving her notes about things no one should know. She begins a descent down a delusion of paranoia even accusing a neighbor of breaking into her house and poisoning her cat. She knows the house wants her there, she can feel it. But as she digresses, she loses her job and begins to relive her past which she has tried to keep hidden from herself.

But nothing could prepare Sarah for what happens next when she discovers a dead body up in the attic. She knows whose it is and what makes matters worse Joe has left her and now she is alone in the house fighting for her sanity.

Could the house be doing this to her? Or is it the ghost of the husband who killed his wife? Do they know she has a lot in common with them? Or is it a neighbor who wants them out. She begins to not make sense, even to herself. She loses sense of time and can’t understand what’s happening around her.

As all the insanity and paranoia comes to a head and with-it Sarah’s secrets which have been hidden for years are exposed. And the body count will rise. Just as it seems it always does at Black Wood House.

The Stranger Upstairs is an intense deep dive into mania and lunacy with a terrifying ending which is so good it will continuously keep you thinking who was the real killer, a person or something else?

Thank you #NetGalley #Bantam #The StrangerUpstairs #LisaM.Matlin for the advanced copy.

𝚁𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐: 4.25⭐️
𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: Thriller/mystery📚

𝙼𝚢 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜:
A captivating psychological thriller that was both creepy and unique.

𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎:
Murder/haunted houses
Unreliable narrator
Dark and twisty reads
Unexpected endings

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚍:
Blog posts/ newspaper clippings
The cover

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛:
The epilogue, it just left me unsatisfied
The social media influencer part got annoying
There are some plot holes

𝙵𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚀𝚞𝚘𝚝𝚎𝚜:
★ “Maybe it's Maybelline. Or maybe it's murder.”

This book is perfect for people who not only love thrillers, but also love watching HGTV for the latest fixer upper renovations.

The Stranger Upstairs was utterly shocking and I could not put it down. It starts out with a really unreliable, unlikeable narrator, but somehow the author still pulls you in. Chapter after chapter, you will be questioning everything you think you know. I really enjoyed this book and cannot wait to read more from this author!

Sarah and Joe purchase a house at a good deal. A murder was committed in the house over 40 years ago and they were told it’s been vacant. Sarah and Joe have a lot of secrets, so this is a fresh start. But can a house hold onto its secrets? Is it haunted? This house seems to take on a life of its own. As the book progresses, secrets are slowly revealed and the book becomes much more ominous as Sarah spirals out of control.

If you like creepy, twisted, and a little odd, you will enjoy this psychological read! A perfect read for Halloween season! Sarah is a therapist/author/influencer. Joe is a bartender/gamer. Sarah is a unreliable narrator, very unlikeable, but in my opinion, most of the characters are. I love my endings tied up neatly, but this one still has me thinking about it. Please make sure you read the Author’s Note. This is a debut novel and I look forward to reading Ms. Marlin’s next novel. Love the cover!

Thanks to NetGalley, Random House/Ballantine/Bantam Books for this ARC. This is my honest opinion.

Sarah has a booming blog and social media presence. Her and her husband decide to purchase an older house in a well-sought-after town. The house needs a complete overhaul and has a well-known dark past. However, Sarah sees this as an opportunity to keep up her social media following. Once they move in, they quickly learn no one wants them living there, not even the house itself.

Sarah balances her job as a therapist, her marriage, house repairs, and unfriendly neighbors while she tries to figure out why certain things keep happening and what actually happened in her house that no one is telling her.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy. I must admit I was a little confused reading this, but I think that is what the authors wanted. It was the middle of the road for me.

The Stranger Upstairs, by Lisa M. Matlin is a spooky, eerie, tension-packed thriller about Sarah Slade, a pseudo-psychologist and social media influencer who purchases Black Wood House, a haunted house where a grisly murder-suicide took place. Her intention is to flip it, documenting the process, gain publicity and notoriety along the way.

Sarah is married, but her marriage seems to be in trouble, as are her finances and her therapy practice. Her publishing team is also waiting for her next big book, so the pressure is mounting. Not only is her husband not thrilled with this move, neither is the town, who regards her purchase and reno-for-profit as an affront to the couple who died there. The house in itself also seems to have strong feelings about it’s new inhabitants.

This story isn’t necessarily original, and we do spend an inordinate amount of time in the main character’s head, which can be confusing at times and frustrating at others. In addition to the stunning cover, this fast-paced thriller is a chilling, creepy story filled with twists, turns and surprises and will keep you engaged throughout.

This is the perfect October, spooky season read. It’s eerie and disturbing from start to finish. The characters are unreliable. Creepy things are happening. There’s a lot of memory loss and weird conversations with strangers, making it disturbing along the way.⁣
⁣
When Sarah, a well known social media influencer decides to buy a house that’s been known to be haunted with plans to renovate, she soon discovers she may have taken on way more than she expected.⁣
⁣
Her cat, Reaper adds an extra eerie appeal always meowing and acting strange in different areas of the house.⁣
⁣
The builders are acting bizzare, accidents are happening, news articles about different deaths appear.⁣
⁣
From start to finish this has you on the edge of your seat unsure if this house is haunted, if Sarah is dealing with a psychological disorder, if the neighbors killer- you have no idea! ⁣
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Well, I got to Chapter 4 and had to call it with this one. The protagonist is extremely annoying, whiney and not someone I’d like to spend any more time with. The plot is slow and repetitive, and I'm only on chapter 4. I’m sorry, this isn’t my cup of tea at all.

This book felt a bit like a fever dream - sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes it's not. This book went back and forth. The setting and creeps are great - some of the character decisions and plot lines leave you scratching your head a bit. But overall, a good entertaining read.

I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS BOOK!!! Oh my gosh, there are not enough good words I can say about this one.. by far my favorite read of the year. When I first started reading it gave me season 1 American Horror Story vibes, but then as the book goes on it reminded me a little bit of The Watcher, with the neighbors being sketchy about the house situation!!
The Stranger Upstairs was well written, spooky, creepy, addicting, and in my opinion, mind blowing! The ending 1 for sure did not see coming. I 1,000 times recommend this book to everyone and definitely give it a go this spooky season!

Eerie, Thrilling, and keeps you guessing. So addicting, you’ll want to stay up all night reading. I was on edge throughout this thrilling read.

Sarah and her husband buy a murder house, and you can imagine how that could go wrong. However, Sarah isn’t exactly mentally stable. She and her husband have a strained relationship and a lot of secrets. A lot of the time we the reader have no clue if there are things going on in the house or if it is all in Sarah’s head. Which to be honest is what makes it worth reading.

I liked that the author slowly revealed one secret at a time so that there was always new information about our MC. It makes the book addicting.

I read it all in the middle of the night while my family was sleeping and it made it all the more thrilling to read. I finished it pretty quickly which didn’t let me predict the book, but there is no way I could have guessed all of this.

“Most people sweep monsters under the bed. I pull the covers back and let them crawl in.”

Debut author Lisa M. Matlin’s “The Stranger Upstairs” is a fast-paced, creepy psychological thriller/horror novel.

Self-help guru and social media influencer, Sarah, and her husband, Joe, have purchased the infamous Blackwood House - the location of a murder/suicide - for a bargain price. The plan is to renovate the dilapidated home and resell for a profit, while chronicling the repairs on Sarah’s popular Instagram page.

But, nothing is as it seems, and the house has a different plan.

With some genuinely scary moments and a plot that pulled me right in, I truly enjoyed the book and look forward to more from this author.

I love thrillers where the house becomes one of the central characters in the story line. Sarah buys Black House because the price is low then finds out the cost is much, much higher than she is willing to pay. This debut thriller puts Lisa M Matlin on everyone's TBR radar in a hurry.

3.75
The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa Matlin is a dark mystery set near Melbourne, Australia.
Sarah, marriage therapist and blogger, convinces her husband Joe that they should buy a house in the upscale town of Beacon. The house is a bargain because it was the site of brutal murders 40 years before, but that does not deter Sarah, because they need money and she wants to fix it and flip it for a tidy profit. Of course, all does not go as planned. There are mysterious occurrences, possible poisonings, and hostile neighbors.
The tale is told from Sarah’s first person POV, and she is a conniving, snarky person who is hard to like. There are a few other characters who were either unsympathetic, evil, or just plain weird. I could not become invested in any of them.
While the story starts out slowly, it does pick up and is a reasonably engaging mystery with several mind-bending twists near the end. The literary device of alternating Sarah’s POV with her blogpost and with TV news reports makes the story more dynamic and kept me engaged to the end!
Overall this is a good psychological suspense novel with much promise and good descriptive writing, a great deal of interesting information about Australia’s flora and fauna, and a dark foreboding vibe. It suffers from unlikeable characters and an uneven plot.
The writing is skillful enough that I would look for Ms. Matlin’s future novels.

Thank you to Bantam/Random House and Netgalley for the ARC. This is my honest review.

This book caught me from the beginning. I love a good thriller and you don’t get more suspenseful than a spooky murder house! Ominous, gothic, and chilling - this was a wonderful fall read and I can’t wait to see more from this author. Also, the cover is breathtaking! Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this ARC.