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.⁣
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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.⁣
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Her cat, Reaper adds an extra eerie appeal always meowing and acting strange in different areas of the house.⁣
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The builders are acting bizzare, accidents are happening, news articles about different deaths appear.⁣
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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.

The Stranger Upstairs gives off immediate horror-read vibes. The quick synopsis is Sarah Slade, a therapist, and Instagram influencer, buys a murder house to renovate and use as the substance for her upcoming book. Sarah’s life holds many secrets, including her past and crumbling marriage. As she begins to redesign the home, the home seems to fight back. The storyline details her decaying life’s plans inside her newly bought decaying home. In general, this was a good mystery/thriller read, perfect for the approaching Halloween season. I’d suggest this one to people who like creepy paranormal or atmospheric thrillers. 3.5 ⭐️
Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an arc copy for an honest review.

Wow what a great book! This book was truly filled with so much suspense and kept me on my toes until the very last page! I was so invested in trying to figure out how everything was going to be connected and I couldn’t put the book down. Sarah Slade is not who she says she is and I was invested. As a reader, watching her take on different skins was intriguing. You never knew who she really was and what she would do next. 100% recommend this book to everyone. I also suggest really reading the authors note at the end of the book!

This book surprised me. I cannot go to much into it because I don't want to give anything away. All I have to say is WHAT A TWIST! Actually a few. But I did not see it coming. For this debut book by Lisa Matlin I hope to see more from her in the future!

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the advance ecopy.

If you want a fast paced read with lots of twists and turns this is for you.
Im a long time reader of thrillers and I’ve read all the tropes. This wasn’t different than a lot of what I’ve read in the past. That being said, I wasn’t disappointed. I was tricked a few times and other times if it had been a bear it would have bit me.
All in all a propulsive read. I look forward to another book by this author.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an early copy in exchange for a honest opinion. 3.5⭐️

I love a haunted house story and will happily try any and all of them that come my way. When I first heard about The Stranger Upstairs, I was immediately drawn to it for the haunted house element, but also the sketchy main character running from their past reeled me in. Always a sucker for secrets!

Matlin does a great job of bringing Sarah to life for the reader as we slowly get to know her, receive hints about her past, and watch her struggle to deal with whatever is happening in her new home. The fact that she was supposed to be a self-help influencer added a fun plot device, but I wish it would have been fleshed out a bit more. The book talks about how Sarah bought the house to flip and gain fame, but that got lost in the book once it started getting deeper into the story.

All of the mysterious events happening in the house felt very realistic and paranoia inducing. This isn’t a gory story, so if you’re worried about that with your creepy house, you’ll be safe here. This is more of a spiraling out of control story built on a mountain of suspicion. Without giving away too much of the plot, I will say that Matlin did a great job of keeping me guessing and giving shifty eyes to everyone in this small town.

The cover for this book may be fun and bright, but it’s a solid spooky season contender for your TBR!

The Stranger Upstairs starts off as atmospheric and daunting. Is it a haunted house? Is it a group of neighbors who will stop at nothing to have the murder house removed from their lives? What it turns into is something much more confusing - is it an unreliable narrator? Or multiple unresolved storylines? I was hooked from the beginning but overall felt a bit unsatisfied by the ending.