Review: 'The Wife Upstairs' by Rachel Hawkins

 For the new year we all deserve a new take on Jane Eyre! I don't make the rules, that's just how it is. Since I've followed Rachel Hawkins on Twitter for quite a while, I have been slowly but surely getting more amped up for The Wife Upstairs over the past few months. So of course, once it came out, I got my very own copy and RACED through it.

Pub. Date: 05/01/2021
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

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? 

Jane Eyre is a Classic, as in really capital C Classic. This means it has been subject to countless of rewritings and adaptations, attempts to "sex it up" or modernize it. These don't always work, for various reasons. I've always found that the best adaptations of any classic have two things in common with each other which have now become my adaptation rules: an author must really understands the main theme or argument of the original novel and an author must be, in some way, (lovingly) dissatisfied with the original novel. You have to understand that Pride & Prejudice isn't just a straight-up romance, that Dracula is full of intense immigration fears, and that the monster in Frankenstein is in the title. (Especially that latter one has mostly been missed.) An author has to have a gripe because surely there has to be a reason to change it up and go back to it. It could be minor or major, but there has to be a purpose. I agree that Mary Bennet deserves more of a spotlight and am therefore very pleased with all the novels that give her that. If there is no passion behind a rewrite or adaptation, it almost always feels empty to me. I'm very glad to say that with The Wife Upstairs Rachel Hawkins meets both of my arbitrary rules.

Jane has a past, one she desperately wants to leave behind. Walking dogs isn't exactly glamorous but it is a first step, especially when it throws her, quite literally, into the path of Eddie Rochester. He is rich, widowed and, perhaps, hear ticket out of misery. So begins Jane's campaign to become one of the Thornfield set, but the spectre of Eddie's previous wife, Bea, keeps haunting her. Not to speak of the weird knocks in the house and the fact that the police keeps visiting. What will catch up with Jane first, her own past or Eddie's? Being based on Jane Eyre, the trick for Hawkins lies in rearranging a familiar story in such a way that the expected ending still surprises you. And she manages to do that! Although, being an avid thriller reader with a (massive) soft spot for the Brontës, I saw some of the twists and turns coming, I still greatly enjoyed diving into this reimagining. I loved seeing how Hawkins brought in various characters in new configurations. As you wonder who is really using who, The Wife Upstairs keeps you enthralled. 

In The Wife Upstairs Hawkins creates a brilliant, sweltering atmosphere that makes everything suspicious. The facades of happiness and beauty and contentment that everyone is keeping up can't help but slip occasionally and Hawkins gives us the perfect Jane who can catch those occasions. Where Brontë's Jane is perceptive but quiet, Hawkins' Jane is perceptive and enterprising. She uses what she sees to refashion herself into a woman who can belong anywhere. The same iron core runs through both Janes, however, and I continue to revel in it. Rochester is a little bit more of a mystery in The Wife Upstairs but, this book being a thriller rather than a straight-up Gothic romance, that makes sense. From the cast of supporting characters a few are given the chance to really shine, which brings some extra depth to the novel. Aside from that, Hawkins' writing was deliciously direct and there are some brilliant images in The Wife Upstairs and, yes, I am particularly referring to the forest in the lake, which has haunted me for the past few nights. (I want to see it so bad, but I also really don't.) Considering I read The Wife Upstairs within 20 hours, I can't wait for Hawkins' next book.

I give this book...

4 Universes!

Deliciously Southern and Gothic, The Wife Upstairs is a delight. I couldn't help but speed read through it but made myself wait for the final few chapters till the early morning. Whether you're a fan of Jane Eyre or a fan of sweltering Southern heat with an extra serving of suspicion and suspense, treat yourself to The Wife Upstairs.