📖 Blog Tour ~ The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins

📖 Delighted to start the New Year with this blog tour📖 

Harper Collins
5 January 2021

My thanks to the publishers and Random Things Tours for my copy of the book
and the invitation to this blog tour

A girl looking for love… When Jane, a broke dog-walker newly arrived in town, meets Eddie Rochester, she can’t believe her luck. Eddie is handsome, rich and lives alone in a beautiful mansion since the tragic death of his beloved wife a year ago. 

A man who seems perfect… Eddie can give Jane everything she’s always wanted: stability, acceptance, and a picture-perfect life. 

A wife who just won’t stay buried… But what Jane doesn’t know is that Eddie is keeping a secret – a big secret. And when the truth comes out, the consequences are far more deadly than anyone could ever have imagined… 

A delicious twist on a Gothic classic..

My thoughts...

I'm a huge fan of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and have read the novel several times so it is always with some trepidation that I read a modern day re-imagining of this classic psychological suspense story.

The Wife Upstairs brings the story right into modern day America and we meet a rather mysterious Jane who is employed as a dog-walker for those bored housewives who live on an exclusive estate of prestigious mansions in Birmingham, Alabama. Whilst on one of her daily dog walks Jane is intrigued by a house which, although stunning in its design, appears to stand quite alone. When she meets Eddie Rochester, the enigmatic owner of the property, Jane is soon engulfed in a whirlwind romance with this handsome, but troubled widower.

What then follows has all the Gothic twists of the original story but which brings everything bang up to date with characters that, although similar to Jane Eyre, have modern day dilemmas to face. There is an air of creeping menace from the start, from the cloying and self-obsessed women who befriend Jane, to the shadowy figures which haunt her past. The sense of mystery is brought sharply into focus when Jane comes up against some rather deadly secrets in Eddie's past. 

It's not an easy task to re-imagine a classic but all credit to the author for keeping the splendid Gothic elements of surprise, which is just what is needed to keep the story suspenseful, and for placing Jane and Eddie very firmly in the twenty-first century. The Wife Upstairs has enough twists to keep you guessing and there’s a deliciously creepy air of tension especially when Jane starts to realise that all is not as it seems in this rather too good be true world.

About the Author

Rachel Hawkins is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books for young readers, and her work has been translated in over a dozen countries. She studied gender and sexuality in Victorian literature at Auburn University and currently lives in Alabama with her husband and son. The Wife Upstairs is her first adult novel.

Twitter @LadyHawkins #TheWifeUpstairs

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