Review: The Wife Upstairs
The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I don't know what it is about Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, my least loved of her novels and yet one I am drawn to again and again, like a moth to a flame. Sometimes, as in the case of a novel like Jean Rhys's The Wide Sargasso Sea or Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, I've loved the tie-in, but other times, such as with Tracy Chavalier's Reader, I Married Him I'm left feeling aloof. So I went into Rachel Hawkins's The Wife Upstairs with curiosity and a small amount of trepidation. A modern take on Jane Eyre? Hmmm. It was engrossing!
In a novel that reads like Jane Eyre meets Gone Girl, Hawkins gives us a grifter Jane (not her real name, more on that later, haha) who has lived through hard times coming from the foster care system out West. Jane is now sort of hiding out in Alabama, getting by as a dog walker, living with a very creepy John Rivers (who sort of knew her back when), and trying to find her way among the "ladies who lunch" in Thornfield Estates when she catches the eye of Eddie, a widower who hires her to walk his dog, Adele. Eddie's wife Bea supposedly died along with her friend Blanche. How and why remains something of a mystery. Eddie has inherited his wife's business and is trying to manage it along with his own construction planning business. And quiet Jane seems just the tonic for him. He recognizes something in Jane. Only it's not what you think.
I found this a surprisingly enjoyable twist on the original gothic "Jane Eyre" story. (Longtime blog readers will recall I can never forgive Jane for marrying Rochester.) In fact, there are a number of twists, and though I started to get ideas about what was really going on about halfway through the book, Hawkins's careful plotting made it quite enjoyable to see how things played out. This is a suspenseful novel deliciously full of villains and anti-heroes. You'll find yourself disliking so many characters but eagerly trying to figure out exactly what happened, to whom, and why.
I listened to the audiobook, beautifully narrated by Emily Shaffer, Kirby Heyborne, and Lauren Fortgang.
I received a digital audio review copy of this novel from Macmillan Audio in exchange for an honest review.
~ ~ ~
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I don't know what it is about Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, my least loved of her novels and yet one I am drawn to again and again, like a moth to a flame. Sometimes, as in the case of a novel like Jean Rhys's The Wide Sargasso Sea or Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, I've loved the tie-in, but other times, such as with Tracy Chavalier's Reader, I Married Him I'm left feeling aloof. So I went into Rachel Hawkins's The Wife Upstairs with curiosity and a small amount of trepidation. A modern take on Jane Eyre? Hmmm. It was engrossing!
In a novel that reads like Jane Eyre meets Gone Girl, Hawkins gives us a grifter Jane (not her real name, more on that later, haha) who has lived through hard times coming from the foster care system out West. Jane is now sort of hiding out in Alabama, getting by as a dog walker, living with a very creepy John Rivers (who sort of knew her back when), and trying to find her way among the "ladies who lunch" in Thornfield Estates when she catches the eye of Eddie, a widower who hires her to walk his dog, Adele. Eddie's wife Bea supposedly died along with her friend Blanche. How and why remains something of a mystery. Eddie has inherited his wife's business and is trying to manage it along with his own construction planning business. And quiet Jane seems just the tonic for him. He recognizes something in Jane. Only it's not what you think.
I found this a surprisingly enjoyable twist on the original gothic "Jane Eyre" story. (Longtime blog readers will recall I can never forgive Jane for marrying Rochester.) In fact, there are a number of twists, and though I started to get ideas about what was really going on about halfway through the book, Hawkins's careful plotting made it quite enjoyable to see how things played out. This is a suspenseful novel deliciously full of villains and anti-heroes. You'll find yourself disliking so many characters but eagerly trying to figure out exactly what happened, to whom, and why.
I listened to the audiobook, beautifully narrated by Emily Shaffer, Kirby Heyborne, and Lauren Fortgang.
I received a digital audio review copy of this novel from Macmillan Audio in exchange for an honest review.
~ ~ ~
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