Get ready for a lightning-fast read with familiar characters in an altogether unfamiliar setting ... Rachel Hawkins has taken great liberties in modernizing this tale of a tragic love triangle, but even if you aren't familiar with the original story, it's believable and irritatingly possible even in modern times. The author issues a warning: This nightmare could still happen ... With all of its nods to the original work, it's a good nail-biter today and worth sticking with until the end.
A clever, modern-day thriller that uses Charlotte Brontë’s novel as its jumping-off point but quickly heads into darker territory ... Here, Jane’s story is both thoroughly satisfying and consistently surprising, right to the novel’s final pages. Obviously those who are Jane Eyre fans already will delight the most in the little Easter eggs that Hawkins sprinkles throughout the book. However, The Wife Upstairs also stands on its own as a gothic-tinged thriller, one where bright colors, big hair and perfect manners hide more than a few dark secrets.
A fun, exciting, page turner that has been rightfully billed as a 21st century Jane Eyre twisted into a domestic thriller ... While our story begins from Jane’s perspective, Hawkins flips the script (more than once) and switches up who we the reader get each section of the story from. We get a lot more information this way, as opposed to having everything come from only one character, but at the same time we get a much more personal view of the story, including tons of neighbourhood gossip, than we would if the entire story were told through a third person omniscient narrator. This storytelling device works perfectly in The Wife Upstairs and will keep you glued to the pages.
