The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins [book review]

The Wife Upstairs book summary:

The Wife Upstairs is a mystery/thriller by Rachel Hawkins. The story takes place in Birmingham, Alabama not long after Jane moves there. She works at a coffee shop and walks dogs in a really nice neighborhood just to make ends meet. No one really knows who she is and she wants to keep it that way. It doesn’t take long for her to really get to know those that are in the gated community where she walks the dogs. They are snooty and feel like they are above all. They all like to make sure they have the latest gossip of the neighborhood too.

But when the recently widowed Eddie starts showing some interest in her she soon becomes the talk of the neighborhood. Eddie is the most mysterious resident in the neighborhood and doesn’t actively partake in the gossip. They quickly fall for each other and it doesn’t take long for Jane to move in with him. And soon after she starts to feel accepted by the community in the neighborhood. It’s not long after she moves in with him that she starts to learn more about Bea, Eddie’s wife that died in a tragic boat accident. She soon realizes that there’s something that isn’t quite right with the whole situation.

Is Eddie keeping secrets from her? Even if he is keeping secrets from her does she have a right to judge since she’s keeping secrets from him?

What I thought about The Wife Upstairs:

The Wife Upstairs is a thriller by Rachel Hawkins that was just published on January 5, 2021! This book was also a part of The Book of the Month too! This is a thriller I was pretty excited about reading. It’s a pretty hyped book that’s been getting a lot of attention recently and with good reason. This book has so many twists and turns it’s bound to keep you interested throughout the entire story.

Characters

Despite this book is a really fun and quick read there’s really not a lot of depth to the characters. This book really isn’t a character-driven book so if that’s what you’re wanting then you might want to pass on this book. The Wife Upstairs is really more of a plot-driven story that keeps your attention and makes it stay there.

The main problem that I have with Jane and Eddie is that there’s no background to them. I get that their background is being kept secret for obvious reasons, but once certain things are revealed in the storyline then there really is no reason to keep things hidden. That’s how I feel with Jane anyways. To be honest I can’t even remember her big reveal if it was even there. This is the main thing that disappointed me with this book. I wanted to know why she ran away and created a life of her own where no one knows who she is. Why start all over again? And to be honest she doesn’t do it very well. How no one from her past found her sooner is beyond me.

However, I do wish that they would get rid of this book having “southern charm”. Coming from someone who actually lives in this south this book by no means contains any type of “southern charm”. The Wife Upstairs is full of snooty rich women that think they are all that. Not all of the south is like this. I kind of wish that books represented the south a little bit better because quite of few of them go one of two ways. One is books like this where you have characters who think they are better than everyone else. The second type I’ve seen pretty often is where you have some of the dumbest characters because I mean it’s the south right? Categorizing people from the south in one of these two categories frustrates me so so much!

The Plot

So, the plot of The Wife Upstairs is actually pretty good to me. Rachel Hawkins does a great job with the pacing and keeping you interested. The only thing that really bothers me is Jane and how she’s able to keep her identity a secret. She doesn’t exactly do a very good job at keeping her identity a secret and someone does end up finding out that she’s keeping secrets. Granted the person who found out had a little bit of luck with it but you’d think others would find out a lot quicker.

Towards the ending of the book, Jane gets a really huge gift that was left in a will. I’m not going to say from who because that will give away too much. You would think that when the will is being made that it would be clear that Jane isn’t her real name. You’d think there would be more background or regulations when it comes to these things. Then again the person who left the will knew she was keeping secrets so maybe that helped. I just figured when dealing with someone’s will then you wouldn’t exactly be able to deal with someone who isn’t who she says she is.

Other than this though I actually really did enjoy the story. I probably wouldn’t have finished the book in a day otherwise.

If you enjoy thrillers then you might also like We Were Never Here.