The Wife Upstairs
By Rachel Hawkins
Blurb
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…
Our Review
The Wife Upstairs is a modern retelling of Jane Eyre. I love Jane Eyre and have read it many times so this was a difficult book to review because judged against the original I felt it was lacking slightly but judged in its own right it was highly readable and intriguing.
It fulfils a purpose in bringing the tale to a modern audience and solving a problem the author thought existed in the original – mainly that Jane deserved better than her lot.
Jane is a dogwalker and sometimes petty thief in the Thornfield Estate when she meets Eddie Rochester. His wife and best friend disappeared six months earlier and there is somewhat of a scandal surrounding it. It is clear that he has feelings for his wife still but Jane feels she can lure him in.
“Bea Rochester had been perfect. The perfect mogul, the perfect woman, the perfect wife. Probably had never heard of Easy Mac or seen the inside of a pawnshop.
I had one thing over her. I was still alive.”
One thing that really struck me about the Jane in this tale is that she is incredibly hard to like, mostly because she is so scheming.
The book flows easily and I did enjoy it but I felt I would have enjoyed it more if I didn’t know beforehand that it was supposed to be a retelling.
Our Final Rating...
Read & Shared 19 Times.
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