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Saturday 30 January 2021

Book Review: THE WIFE UPSTAIRS by Rachel Hawkins

Title: THE WIFE UPSTAIRS

Author:  RachelHawkins

Read: January 2021

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟1/2

 

Book Description:

 

Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates––a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name.

But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can’t help but see an opportunity in Eddie––not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for.

Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past––or his––catches up to her?

With delicious suspense, incisive wit, and a fresh, feminist sensibility, The Wife Upstairs flips the script on a timeless tale of forbidden romance, ill-advised attraction, and a wife who just won’t stay buried. In this vivid reimagining of one of literature’s most twisted love triangles, which Mrs. Rochester will get her happy ending? 




My musings:

 


I like reading retellings because it’s usually fun to see how an old classic would translate into our modern times. Having read and loved Jane Eyre as a youngster (I really must re-read it one of these days!) I was excited to read THE WIFE UPSTAIRS as part of a book buddy group read. And I guess if you’re drawn to easy, popcorn thrillers with a bunch of unlikeable characters who are as nasty as a pit full of scorpions, then this book will be entertaining enough.

 

Sadly, the story was more miss than hit for me. I thought that all the things that made the original classic so enjoyable didn’t translate well into the modern setting. With Jane Eyre’s atmospheric old English mansion, the constraints of society and gender roles at the time, and even just the gloomy English weather, Charlotte Bronte created a novel that has entertained millions of readers over the last 150 or so years – with good reason. I could easily buy a crazy wife hidden in the attic of an old English manor house, with its multiple wings, dark corners and crevices and servants bustling about, but not in Eddie’s ultra-modern Thornfield Estate home. Even if our modern day Jane was a bit thick, the dog surely would have alarmed at the thumps and bumps coming from upstairs? But most of all, the sheer nastiness of each and every character in Hawkins’ version slowly eroded my enjoyment of the story. All those bitchy, backstabbing, snarky women read like utter stereotypes to me, ones I was only too eager to put out of my mind when the last page had been turned. And when it all came down to it, even those parts of the story that weren’t totally implausible were fairly predictable to me, robbing me of any surprise element that would have redeemed the book for me.

 

Even though the book totally missed the mark for me, I can see that other readers may enjoy the bunch of dysfunctional characters racing like a doomed train towards its dramatic finale. Personally, I thought that it was all wrong, from the modern American setting to the stereotypical, snarky characters and oh-so-much suspension of disbelief to give the characters the benefit of the doubt for being – frankly – a bit stupid. Never mind, we can’t all love the same things and I do think I need a break from domestic thrillers for a while!

 




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