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Picture this: You're an orphan who grew up in the foster care system. You work as a dog walker for rich ladies who lunch, with no other, more exciting career prospects before you. And you consider yourself nothing special in the looks department. So when the hottest multi-millionaire widower in Birmingham, Alabama, seems infatuated with you at first sight, does it seem too good to be true?
The answer for Jane Bell is maybe, but she tells herself not to question her good fortune—at least, for the first half of THE WIFE UPSTAIRS. But something is indeed afoot, starting with the mysterious thumping she hears in her new boyfriend Eddie Rochester's attic.
Young and distracted by Eddie's wealth and good looks, Jane is only too willing to believe his explanation that the house is just prone to odd noises. After all, she's lucky to have this perfect new life with the perfect man. If only she didn't feel she was living in the shadow of his beautiful and brilliant first wife Bea. And if only she didn't have secrets of her own that could cost her everything if they came to light.
Then a visit from the police upends her newfound optimism. They inform her that Bea Rochester didn't accidentally drown with her best friend Blanche in a boating accident nearly a year ago, as the local gossips had told her. Blanche's body has finally resurfaced, and there's ample evidence that she was murdered. When the authorities arrest Blanche's husband, Jane can't help but wonder if that's relief she spots in Eddie's eyes.
Jane refuses to retreat into the role of helpless gothic ingenue, as she tells Eddie in a memorable send-up of Bronte's famous "I am no bird" line. Eddie ticks all the boxes for a Byronic hero-in-doubt, and scrappy survivor Jane becomes determined to figure out what's really behind his charismatic charm. Is he the victim of a killer still on the loose, or does he pose a real danger to her life?
While Jane's narrative is compulsively readable, the journal entries and flashbacks told in Bea's point of view are what give the novel its vibrancy. It's no spoiler to reveal that not only is Bea not dead, but she's the source of the mysterious noises Jane hears, secreted away by Eddie in his mansion's panic room (which, oddly enough, locks from the outside). The question is, why hasn't Eddie killed her yet? And can she make him remember what they once were to each other—even as her replacement moves into her house and her life?
A clever modernization of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, former English teacher Rachel Hawkins' THE WIFE UPSTAIRS pays homage to its predecessor while delivering plenty of devious twists of its own.
The book's darkly flawed heroine may feel slightly jarring at first to devoted fans of the Bronte classic—she's prone to petty theft and masking her feelings with manipulative insincerity. (This reviewer found Jane Bell fascinating once I got over myself.) And those who know the book as well as Hawkins obviously does may predict the major turning point at the end. But whether you're familiar with the original or not, the well-drawn characters and fast-paced plot make this modern gothic suspense a deliciously creepy page-turner.
§ Tracy Fernandez Rysavy teaches literature and writing for the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and edits romance fiction for an indie publisher. She is the former editor-in-chief of the Green American magazine.
Reviewed by Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, January 2020
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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