Jane has recently arrived in Birmingham, staying with a creepy guy she knew during her time in foster care. She’s left a job at the local coffeeshop to become a dog-walker in the gated community Thornfield Estates where no one notices if their knick knacks or a few pieces of jewelry go missing.

Then one fateful day, Jane meet Eddie Rochester. Eddie’s wife Bea recently died in a boating accident with her best friend Blanche, their bodies never found in the deep lake. Eddie is dark and brooding …and rich.
Happy to fall into the lap of luxury, Jane is able for a short time to feel relief that her worries are over and she can leave everything in the past. Then she finds herself learning more about the first Mrs. Rochester: an ambitious woman who started with nothing and ended up with an incredibly successful southern lifestyle brand that made her a millionaire. The comments made by the women in the neighborhood and Blanche’s husband Tripp leave Jane uncertain as to what really happened the night Bea and Blanche disappeared. Then, Blanche’s body is discovered and the police begin a murder investigation.

The Wife Upstairs is pitched as a Southern Gothic Jane Eyre which had me immediately interested.
For me, it was a mediocre thriller. It was entertaining enough to keep me turning the pages but it so closely follows the contemporary thriller formula of recent years that I already had it figured out basically from page one.

Jane is on the run from her past but why is all a bit vague, dragging to the (underwhelming) reveal in the final quarter of the book. She’s flawed and somewhat unlikeable and we’re supposed to flip back and forth on whether we’re rooting for her. Eddie isn’t all that fleshed out, he’s kind of a prop in my opinion. Bea is the most interesting character here as we learn more about her, but again, I had already figured out her role. The twist ending won’t be much of a twist for readers who have been reading thrillers released in the past decade. I can’t rave about it but it’ll make for a perfectly fine beach read.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The Wife Upstairs is scheduled for release on January 5, 2021.

Wow. So this is a pastiche to "Jane Eyre" that works. Set in modern times, we follow an orphaned young woman named Jane. We find out that Jane is now a dog walker in a fairly affluent area in Alabama, the Thornfield Estates. Jane eventually runs into a wealthy man named Eddie Rochester. Eddie she finds is still getting over his wife, Bea, who was drowned with her best friend months ago during a boating accident. Jane though she has secrets to hide from Eddie, still wants to be with him. The book follows her as she starts to remake herself into the type of woman and wife that she thinks that Eddie deserves.

Jane feels far away from the character of Jane Eyre. This Jane seems hungry for money, for being part of a world that she is at times reluctant to join. Jane has a lot of secrets (that it takes a while to unravel) and starts to worry when it seems as if Eddie is not telling her everything about his marriage to Bea. When Jane starts digging, she finds out a bit more about Bea and her best friend who also died, Blanche, and wonders what if anything was going on between the two women.

Hawkins writes the book via several different points of view. We follow Jane, and then get narrative from Bea via a diary and then Eddie as well. The book does a very good job of us not knowing what is going on and who is telling the truth until the very end.

The writing I thought was great, not a straight retelling of Jane Eyre at all, but it has a nice spin on it. The reason why I gave this four stars though is that the book's flow starts to get seriously dragged down by the 50 percent part. I pushed through because I was still intrigued, but I can see other readers after a while going can this move a bit faster?

The ending leaves certain things unresolved, but definitely gives a what the heck ending a la "A Simple Favor" I thought.

Jane was running from something in Arizona and running right into more trouble even though she didn't know it would be trouble.

Jane walks dogs for wealthy people, and one of the neighbors whose wife along with her friend drowned bought a dog so he could get close to Jane.

Jane jumped at the chance to walk Eddie Rochester's dog because she knew she could make him love her and be his next wife. Was she getting herself into something worse than what she left in Arizona?

For Jane, the rich, catty women were the worst, but Jane was getting her plan to work and into place. She nabbed a rich man; now all she had to do was become his wife.

Did Eddie have plans of his own, though, are they already in the works, or have they been carried out?

Then a wrench gets thrown in - the police find out his wife's friend was murdered, and they think Eddie's wife was too.

What will happen next? A lot happens.

Everyone in this book seems to have a secret, and they are ones that may be difficult to keep. Everyone is also pretty good liars.

I would be sure to put this book in your TBR....it is that good. 5/5

This book was given to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Really great suspenseful read. I definitely enjoyed this and stayed up way later than i should've trying to figure it out!

I received an ARC from netgalley for my honest review.

The rich southern suburbs retelling of Jane Eyre, a twisty-turning tale of a young woman reinventing herself and upgrading her life when she meets a rich widow whose wife disappeared under unusual circumstances. I was sucked into this one, though occasionally would get distracted by the juvenile voice of Jane. The high society ladies of Birmingham, Alabama lent an intriguing atmosphere to the story, and the narrator point of view switches kept me guessing. A good distracting thriller.

I received an advance reader copy through Net Galley for my unbiased review of The Wife Upstairs.

This story is revealed in languorous, tantalizing bits and pieces throughout the book. The author only shows us what she wants us to see, just like many of the characters within. Each glimpse of a deeper truth kept me reading to find out what the whole story had to offer. I found most of the characters relatable enough.

Jane comes from a troubled past and is both shrewd and lucky enough to find her way into acceptance in an affluent neighborhood very far, both physically and metaphorically, from home. But is Eddie, the rich widower, too good to be true? Who is manipulating whom in this multi-layered story of ambition, love, and friendship?

Read this book and lose yourself in Thornfield Estates!

I.... I don't even know what insanity I just read, and I loved it! EVERYONE is this book is completely effed up in major ways, it's impossible to really guess what the truth is or what's even going on. Definitely glad I got the chance to read it, I couldn't put it down!

Rachel Hawkins's “The Wife Upstairs” was a joy to read. The protagonist, Jane, is the queen of sass and snark. I loved her witty, straight-forward talk. She's approachable and likeable. Plus, she drops a nice f-bomb in the first few pages.

Having grown up in foster care and group homes, Jane leaves Arizona for a new life. She winds up in Birmingham, Alabama, living with an acquaintance in a “concrete box.” To make ends meet, she works at a coffee shop and walks dogs for Stepford Wives-types in a fancy neighborhood. And she ends up plucking jewelry and other small treasures from her affluent clients.

“The money has never been the point, after all. It’s the having I’ve always enjoyed, plus knowing they’ll never notice anything is missing. It makes me feel like I’ve won something.”

Soon, Jane (not her real name) finds her way into the heart of one of Thornfield Estates’ most eligible, bachelors. Eddie Rochester meets Jane while she’s walking a dog in his neighborhood and he buys a dog the very next day. A recent widower, Eddie is available after his gorgeous, successful wife drowns in an accident, her body lost at sea. And suddenly, Jane is catapulted into an intoxicating new life and romance that she’s only seen on TV.

“Jane and Eddie. I like how it sounds, and I’m going to be Jane forever now, I decide. This is where all the running, all the laying, was leading. It was all worth it because now I’m here with this beautiful man in this beautiful house.”

Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane realizes that life is not as it seems. And the mysterious drowning incident becomes a suspected homicide.

“Bea Rochester had been perfect. The perfect mogul, the perfect woman, the perfect wife. Probably had never even heard of Easy Mac of seen the inside of a pawnshop. But I had one thing over her. I was still alive.”

How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past––or his––catches up to her?

The twists and turns just might surprise you can keep you on your toes!

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the advanced reader copy, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I was really eager to read this as a fan of both Jane Eyre and Rachel Hawkins' YA books, and wow, it did not disappoint! She really nailed the Southern gothic vibe with a modern spin, and the setting and characters all felt very real- and very creepy. I look forward to seeing more from Hawkins in the thriller vein as I was impressed with how well her voice (which I love in her romances!) translated to the genre.

Wow! All I can say is WOW!! I flew through this book and was shocked at the twist. This book is one you definitely won't regret picking up.

Jane is a poor dog walker with a sketchy past. While walking dogs in a rich neighborhood full of mansions and housewives Jane meets newly widowed Eddie. Quickly she starts to see her chance at a new life when she finds herself falling for Eddie. From go the death of Eddies wife has been full of questions but the more it is looked into the more clear the truth becomes.

Whoa, this book is definitely not the typical second chance at love thriller. The characters are so unlikeable but I actually thought that was necessary for the story. I thought I had figured it out early on but the final twist came at the very end. Told from multiple view points it was definitely a book that gripped me right away!

Thank you Netgalley & St Martin’s Press for my ARC of this one!

The beauty of The Wife Upstairs is that the book is very clearly based on Jane Eyre but also in its own little parallel universe, not relying too heavily on staying true to the classic, which was so important in making this a new and interesting read.

In this book, twenty-three year-old Jane, a foster child who aged out of the system, is walking dogs for her rich neighbors and surviving by stealing things people wouldn't miss. Then Jane meets Eddie Rochester, who is still the rich, handsome widower, even in this version. Quickly, Jane and Eddie fall into a whirlwind romance which inevitably ends in Eddie asking Jane to marry him. The only problem? Jane feels that Eddie is also keeping some secrets. The story leads you wanting to find out the truth and what really happened.

This book is great for those who enjoy the classics and also some modern thrillers, as well as people who enjoy lighter reading rather than the classics. It's really an interesting combination of genres that would interest so many types of readers, which makes it great. Of course, it's not actually Jane Eyre, one of my favorites, but it's definitely an interesting, fun read.

Thank you to Rachel Hawkins, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Longtime readers know I’m a sucker for a classic retelling. Jane Austen is my usual catnip, but I’m glad I took a chance on this updated Jane Eyre, set in contemporary Birmingham, Alabama, in the Thornfield Estates neighborhood of Mountain Brook. In Hawkins’s version, Jane becomes a dogwalker with a troubled past she’d prefer to keep hidden, Bertha the owner of a Southern home and fashion empire that put me in mind of Draper James, and Eddie the handsome, grieving widower looking to rebuild his life after tragedy—or so he says. A dark kind of fun.

If you are like me and love books that keep you on the edge of your seat from the first page until the last, read The Wife Upstairs! Full of twists and turns, and "Oh" moments - I wasn't able to put this book down. What a great read!

This one was great! It is a mystery thriller that I didn’t put down. Full of twists and turns that are sure to leave you shocked

I really liked. The book held your attention and moved at a good pace. I kinda guessed the ending but it was good anyway.

If psychological thrillers are your thing, this is a fun, engaging book.
“Jane” is desperate to leave her old, troubled life behind. She attempts to start over by inventing a new identity and getting a job in a swanky suburban community. Things are looking up for her when she becomes involved with a rich, charming, handsome (and did I mention rich?) widower. They quickly get engaged and she begins making friends with the Stepford wives around the neighborhood. Everything is perfect except one little hitch - his deceased wife isn’t actually dead. She’s being held prisoner by her husband in a secret room upstairs.
While the ending seemed a little rushed and a bit anticlimactic, I would still recommend to people who enjoy this genre. Good escape reading.
Thanks to #netgalley and #stmartinspress for this ARC of #thewifeupstairs in exchange for an honest review.

Usually when a book has so many unlikeable characters, I hate it... but Rachel Hawkins' "The Wife Upstairs" was an exception! I was first intrigued by the Jane Eyre similarities, but the twists and turns really sucked me in. I read this within two days because I had to know how it ended... and I was not disappointed! I don't want to give too much away, but if you're looking for a great domestic thriller, you'll want to read this one ASAP!

The Wife Upstairs is a domestic thriller that surprised me how much I enjoyed the quick story of Jane. Jane is a dog walker on the rich side of town. She envy’s their lives and one day meets Eddie. Eddie and Jane quickly fall in love and Jane falls into this rich lifestyle. Eddie starts acting weird and strange things start happening. The story moved quickly and I love how the story wrapped up. A fun thriller. Thank you to @stmartinspress and @netgalley for my advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

I don't love Jane Eyre, so I wasn't so sure about this, but wow did I love The Wife Upstairs! An absolutely fantastic retelling. There were so many twists and turns- I wasn't bored once, and I was bored a lot reading Jane Eyre. Highly recommend picking this up!