This novel is marketed as a twist on the classic Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It takes place in a gated community in Birmingham, Alabama and follows dog walker Jane as she meets Eddie Rochester six months after his wife, Bea, and her friend, Blanche, disappeared. Jane and Eddie's relationship quickly blossoms and before long, Jane is no longer the neighborhood dog walker but instead becomes a member of the community. As Jane and Eddie's relationship grows more serious, Jane starts to hear whispers of theories about what really happened to Bea and Blanche and as much as she wants to put these rumors out of her mind, Jane just can't seem to stay away.
I'll admit that I haven't read Jane Eyre, but I knew enough of the plot from just pop culture references to get a general idea of what this plot was going to be. After I finished reading The Wife Upstairs, I did look up a more detailed synopsis of the plot just to see the similarities. In my opinion, The Wife Upstairs takes a perfect amount of inspiration from Jane Eyre but there are enough modern twists and changes that make it a unique story. I found this a very fun and enjoyable read and didn't feel like I was missing out on anything from not having read Jane Eyre.
By far my most favorite thing about this read was the actual writing. The prose was pretty straightforward, not super flowery or stylized, but it sucked me into the story so fast I was 30% in before I knew it. The majority of the story is Jane becoming one of the ladies in this community and listening to them gossip about past events. In theory, that could come off as very boring and lazy storytelling. However, Hawkins injects so much personality into Jane's inner thoughts or into the little witty retorts that other characters have that it becomes so interesting. I got the same feeling when I read The Girl on the Train where, for the majority of the book, there wasn't a whole lot of action going on and most of the characters were pretty unlikeable, but there was that certain pull in the narrative that just kept me turning the pages.
I really enjoyed the way the narrative was split up. We get both Jane's and Bea's POV in different parts of the novel as well as flashbacks to both their lives before meeting Eddie. I think this not only plays on reader expectation, but it gives a really interesting comparison between what Jane is hearing from the neighbors and then the truth of what happened in the past. Being in both Jane's and Bea's head also allows the reader to know exactly what type of person each woman is. Jane is hiding her identity for some reason, thinks often about stealing items from the wealthy ladies of the community, and she makes very calculated moves in her relationship with Eddie. Bea is very similar in that she manipulates the people and situations around her for her benefit. I think the POV switching was done at just the right time to heighten the tension of the story. I find that some multi-POV books will use one POV as almost a forced cliffhanger where the main POV has a major plot development but instead of exploring that more, we have to hang out in a secondary POV for a while to artificially build tension and suspense. I didn't find that was the case in this book and I was relieved. It really felt like the two POVs were working together and building on one another, which I give Hawkins big points for.
Maybe it was just the fact that this was a gated community, but it was giving me major Desperate Housewives vibes the whole time. The reader gets these glimpses of the underbelly of these perfectly manicured houses and lives and each time we would get a hint of something going on under the surface, I just wanted to dive right in. The little battles and snide remarks that Jane first puts up with and then participates in were very well done and showed Jane's character development. I also found it really interesting how invested Jane was in fitting in with the other ladies of the neighborhood. She was constantly evaluating how they acted, how they dressed, what they talked about and then would imitate them in order to get closer to their inner circle. I also thought it was interesting that all of these characters are flawed in some way and it is a little hard to root for any one character in particular since they all are active participants, in a way, of their own unhappiness. We know Jane isn't some naive girl who gets blinded by a whirlwind romance and Bea wasn't an innocent victim of circumstance.
I do wish we would have gotten more of the relationship between Jane and Eddie. I never really found their relationship believable. In the above mentioned Mashable article, they state that du Maurier never saw Rebecca as a romance and didn't like when people categorized it as such and I can get on board with that idea. However, I would have liked to see more emotional development and feelings on both sides. We get Jane's POV which does show that she really does like Eddie, but she also manipulates him into moving faster along in their relationship at times in order to cement her place in the neighborhood. These inner thoughts and manipulations are contrasted by other thoughts about how in love with Eddie she is and how, much to her own surprise, she really can see a life with him. It came off a little disjointed for me and maybe if we had more slice of life scenes with the two of them being an actual couple, I could understand their relationship more.
I really loved the ending. No spoilers, of course, but I think all the characters got their appropriate ending. The ending is a little open-ended on some details but overall, I think the reader gets a good idea of where these characters are ending up after the whole ordeal of the book. Toward the end, we actually get a scene with Jane and the police detective investigating Bea and Blanche's disappearance and I wish we had gotten more of these scenes throughout the book. It was really interesting to be in Jane's head as she chose her words and way of speaking specifically to mislead the detective. Jane knew she needed to come off as X so she made sure to say Y and act like Z in order to do that. I wouldn't say that I was rooting for Jane by the end because she was a good character that I wanted to have a happy ending, I would say that I was rooting for Jane by the end because she's just so damn good at manipulating to get what she needs and I want to see her do more of that.
Overall, a great mystery read that takes a classic tale and gives it a fresh new spin. The characters were all fantastic and the writing style really pulled me along. It was a bit of a slow burn mystery but really pays off in the end.
304 pages
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC! Publication date is January 05, 2021.
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