The premise of this book was so promising, but it fell a little short in the execution, for me. It was hard for me to care about and connect with the characters, and there was a lot of showing rather than telling.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for a complimentary copy of this novel.

A 5-STAR DEBUT NOVEL!!! A Gothic, Psychological thriller with a murder house full of secrets. Social media influencer and therapist, Sarah Slade and her bartender husband, Joe, buy Black Wood House. But it’s not just the house with shady and murderous secrets. Sarah and Joe also have secrets of their own to keep hidden. Who are they really? What are they hiding from? And the town itself where Black Wood House is located seems to have its own secrets as well. A woman previously disappeared just before Sarah and Joe arrived. Before her, almost an entire family was murdered and their daughter disappeared. And Black Wood House doesn’t seem to want to be renovated. Sarah begins to hear footsteps in the attic at night, her cat begins to act weird and gets very sick. Strange notes begin to pop up that only Sarah would know the information contained in them. She’s slowly losing it. Will Sarah and Joe’s secrets be their unraveling or is Black Wood House going to claim them just like the previous owners?

I am not sure I would ever buy a house with a murder in it... especially after this book! This book was so twisty and I was not sure where it was going to end up. Great book for the fall season. You don't want to miss this thriller!
Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for allowing me to read this book.

DNF at 25%. I found myself not invested in the story or the unreliable narrator of Sarah Slade. It was an interesting premise for a novel, but ultimately I didn't care who was murdered in the house during renovations.

Thank you to Bantam, Random House, and Netgalley for a copy for review consideration.

A creepy psychological thriller which has the MC questioning her grip on reality and of course leaves us readers throughly invested.

Wowzers! What a ride! Amazing debut novel, suspenseful, thrilling! Unexpected twists and turns, you never know what’s going to happen next!
Self-help guru Sarah Slade and her husband Joe buy an infamous murder house that’s been vacant for 40 years to renovate and sell. The people of Beacon aren’t happy with the renovation of Black House and aren’t afraid to let it be known. They think the house should be demolished. Strange things start happening and Sarah blames her neighbors. Soon she finds notes in the house with things no one would know. Sarah thinks her past has come to haunt her along with the house. Questioning the neighbors doesn’t seem to be helping but she finds out she isn’t the first owner of Black Wood House since the murders happened and that she disappeared not that long ago. Can Sarah find out what’s happening in her home before she disappears too?
Thanks NetGalley for this ARC is return for my review.

3.25 stars

Sarah Slade is a therapist and a self-help influencer who with her husband, Joe, just bought an old Victorian house in Melbourne where a man went crazy and murdered his entire family. Cozy! Her goal is to flip the house for a profit and document the journey on social media. 

Sarah and Joe's marriage is already falling apart when they move in, and living in the inhospitable house doesn't help. The neighbors want the place bulldozed, and Sarah starts getting mysterious notes and threatening gifts, and when she hears strange sounds in the attic at night she starts questioning if it's just the neighbors of if the house itself doesn't want them there. 
This would freak anyone out, but the notes specifically refer to a dark past that Sarah and Joe moved to escape. Someone knows Sarah isn't who she says she is, and she's worried that her job and status will all come crashing down around her.
If you don't like unlikable main characters and unreliable narrators, steer clear of this book. That being said, what a wild ride. Every time I thought I had figured out what was going on in this story something else would happen that made that impossible. I find that with thrillers there's a fine line between the good kind of "I didn't see this coming" and "I didn't see this coming because it makes no sense/what is happening". This one stayed on the right side for me but toed the line a bit, I think just because there were SO many different threads to the story.
I liked some elements of the plot twist in this a lot, but wish they'd been fleshed out more and given time to breathe. It can be fun when thrillers hit their climax and everything unravels at once, but I felt like if that part had been expanded some the ending would have been more satisfying for me personally. Overall I liked this story's concept and the author's writing, and will keep an eye out for her future work! I also really appreciated her author's note at the end on mental health and writing.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers, & the author for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

The Stranger Upstairs
Lisa M. Matlin
September 212, 2023

Living in a house in Australia was getting difficult for Sara Slade and her husband, Joe. She needed to begin a new book and revamp her counseling therapy sessions. In reading about an old gothic house that has been vacant for forty years in Beacon, southeast of Melbourne where murder took place in the estate. Not a soul has wanted to live in or own such a piece of real estate. The price had dropped considerably and Sara felt that she and Joe could buy it, renovate it, then sell it making a fortune. Joe didn’t want to consider it but Sara was sold on her idea. She felt they could spend their time and money with the remodel then sell it for much more than they paid. She made the deal and scheduled the move. Once there she moved her beautiful bedroom suite into the master. Unfortunately the room still had blood stains on the hardwood floor from the murder.
The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin will be published on September 12, 2023 by Random House Books. I was selected to read the ARC of her novel by NetGalley. Initially I found it a bit humorous that she would do such a thing. As the novel continued and incidents happened I found the plot to be rather creepy. I did rather like the protagonist’s cat, Reaper.
Many readers may be enthralled by the suspense and chilling nature of such a read. I surmise that such a dark story is too much suspense for me. Do take a chance on this one if the dark and stormy action is your type of a gem to read.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC.

This book is what happens when you mix Haunting of Hill House with The Yellow Wallpaper and then make it into a digital age thriller on Lifetime. Reading that back makes is sound kind of good, but it wasn't really. At least not for me. There are going to be a TON of readers who are going to love this book, and I love that for a debut author, but as a Stephen King lover professionally trained in psychology I did not.

It's a very quick and twisty read, and all the loose ends do get tied up at the end, which is always nice. I hope the author continues to write and doesn't lean on the current formulaic thriller trend as much next time. Definitely see some potential here.

I'm not entirely sure how to review this one. It was a quick read, but wasn't my favorite. It definitely leans more towards horror than thriller, but not too much (because I can't handle true horror!). I had a hard time getting into it at first, but it kept my attention. Unfortunately, I feel like there were a lot of loose ends that weren't wrapped up and I had more questions than answers after finishing.

I read "The Stranger Upstairs" by Lisa M. Matlin on NetGalley. I couldn't put this book down and ended up staying up way to late to finish it. This book is about a woman and her husband who buy a house where a murder happened years before. They plan on fixing it up and selling it for a good profit but things do not go as planned. They have a mysterious past and things seem to be falling apart quickly. Is it the house or is it them?

This book was a little confusing and hard for me to engage with. I wanted to like Sarah, the main character, but her actions were so random and she was so hard to get a feel for that I had a hard time relating to her. I had a hard time following the plot of the book but I think that was almost the point.

I LOVED this book. The last 1/2 had me up way too late with my heart racing, wondering what was going to happen next. It did start out a little irritating because it feels like the main character is sabotaging her life and was almost two people but it all came together leaving me satisfied. It’s rare for me not to see what happens next but this book did it, I had an idea but it went way past what I expected.

This has been posted on Goodreads.

This was overall a fast paced and interesting thriller. The writing was well done and kept my interest the whole time.

While I do enjoy unlikable characters, sometimes reading this from the main character's POV was a little much for me. I think there was some interesting ideas in this that were unique to other thrillers I've read. By the end though, I did lose some interest in the plot and twists.

This was a fun debut and I'd like to see where this author goes in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.

I’m so bored with the mentally ill, drinks too much main character trope. This book is getting great reviews so far, so maybe it just wasn’t for me…

Thanks NetGalley for the arc.

Wow! Very pleasantly surprised with this authors first novel! I went into this thinking I was getting a haunted house story. I did get a haunted house story, but with so much more. The main character is extremely unreliable and unlikable. This was one of those stories that I found myself trying to speed read through because I wanted to know what happened next so bad! Wonderful debut!

The cover for THE STRANGER UPSTAIRS is what initially grabbed my attention and while it wasn’t great it wasn’t terrible either 🤷🏼‍♀️

My thoughts:
-good for spooky season
-gave me season 1 of AHS: Murder House vibes
-unreliable MC and no characters that I liked
-don’t read this is you are easily scared or don’t do well alone at home 🤣

This was a decent suspense novel with a lot of mystery, but the ending is where it really lost and disappointed me. It’s a quick read though so if you’re looking for something this spooky season, you might want to give it a try!

Thank you Netgalley and Random House for the arc.

I LEAPT for joy when I gained digital and audio access to The Stranger Upstairs from Random House Publishing Group/Bantam, Netgalley, Lisa M. Matlin, and PRH Audio before this twisty, psychological zinger hits shelves on September 12, 2023.

Sarah Slade is self-published fame and guides her patients through their psychological traumas, but she’s bit off a little more than she can chew, especially after purchasing a murder house after leaving her old life behind. As renovations take hold, she begins to realize that she’s way in over her head, and starts to hear creaks in the night that don’t sound like the house “settling.” Something a bit more sinister is at hand here, and Sarah is overwhelmed. Overwhelmed so much, that she starts to feel eyes watching her, and that someone is out to take her life and torture her entire existence.

Everything and everyone is not what they seem and the twist will keep you in state of confusion.

Very well done.

The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin
Genre: thriller, horror
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Format: ebook

Sarah and her husband Joe move into an abandoned house with the hopes of flipping it and making a profit. The only problem? It has a chilling history that includes a murder that the whole town is still talking about. What could go wrong? As you may have guessed, a lot.

I liked this because to me it was a mix of horror and thriller. I’ve had mixed experiences with horror, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I really enjoyed this one!!

Quick notes:
🏚️Fast faced
🏚️Eerie feel throughout
🏚️Creepy murder house setting
🏚️Unreliable narrator
🏚️Twisty
🏚️Great read for spooky season

I liked the present day news articles interspersed throughout the book. They really kept me hungry for more - I had to find out what happened!!

The epilogue was good, but I also felt like it was a little unnecessary. However, I do enjoy a good little creepy, “not everything is as it seems” moment. But for this book since everything was wrapped up I think the epilogue undid some of that.

A random note - there were some inconsistent details in chapter 38, I believe. Emily’s sandal becomes a boot and then is a sandal again. It distracted me a little from all of the suspense in the chapter.

Overall, I really enjoyed this spooky ride and would pick up another book by this author!!

Thank you to Bantam Books for my eARC in exchange for my honest thoughts! I’ll be sharing a mini review of this book to my bookstagram account soon.

Loved this gothic psychological thriller!! The main character is a social media influencer, a trend that seems to be more common in books these days and I am loving it. Would recommend for true crime/ thriller lovers!