Have you read this Jane Eyre retelling and need some details on who did what to whom and why? Check out my spoilers and plot summary for The Wife Upstairs!
The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins. Published on January 5, 2021 by St. Martin’s Press.
The Wife Upstairs is a modernization and retelling of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane falls in love with Eddie Rochester, a handsome man whose wife disappeared. But where is Bea Rochester? Can Jane trust Eddie?
First, let’s do a quick (or not so quick) plot summary which will contain spoilers for the ending. Then let’s discuss!
Plot Summary for The Wife Upstairs
Jane: Jane walks dogs in Thornhill Estates, an affluent neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama. She struggles to make ends meet and resents her wealthy clients, so she regularly steals small items from them to sell for cash.
One rainy day, she’s almost hit by a car driven by Eddie Rochester, who lives in the neighborhood. She learns that Eddie’s wife, Bea, went missing six months ago in a boating accident that killed Blanche, Bea’s close friend. Blanche and her husband Tripp are neighbors of the Rochesters, and Jane also walks their dog.
Eddie also gets a dog (hmmm…) and hires Jane as his dog walker. Eddie and Jane start dating. Jane tells Eddie about her terrible living situation (she rents a room from a creepy guy named John) and he invites her to move in. Jane learns more about Bea, a successful business owner who met Eddie on vacation in Hawaii and married him after a whirlwind courtship.
Bea: We get Bea’s narrative in the form of a journal. Eddie is keeping her prisoner in a panic room in their house. She claims Eddie drugged both her and Blanche at the lake house after she accused them of having an affair, then killed Blanche.
Jane: Eddie and Jane get engaged. The police come and inform Eddie that they consider Blanche’s death a homicide and are assuming Bea was murdered too.
Jane is being blackmailed by John, her former roommate, who knows secrets about her past. The neighbors are gossiping that Tripp, Blanche’s husband, was arrested for Blanche’s murder. Jane has been hearing mysterious thumping upstairs at the house.
Jane reveals that, yes, she has a past. Her name isn’t really Jane, but Helen. She destroyed her foster father’s heart medication, which caused his death. This was in revenge for his not taking her sick foster sister to the doctor in time to save her life.
Bea: In Bea’s journal, she reveals that she discovered that Eddie was having an affair with Blanche. Bea tries to get closer to Eddie when he delivers food to her prison room. She asks him questions about Jane and even gets him to sleep with her several times. Then she slips her journal into Eddie’s jacket pocket and Jane finds it. Jane lets Bea out and then she hits Eddie in the head with a pineapple figurine, knocking him unconscious.
Eddie: He met Bea in Hawaii. He was there with a friend who knew who — and how rich —Bea was. After Bea and Eddie started dating, he met Blanche, who had known Bea for years. Blanche told Eddie about how Bea’s mom, an alcoholic, fell down stairs to her death. Blanche insinuates that Bea pushed her mom. Eddie think that is why Bea really killed Blanche: to shut her up about the fact that she caused her mom’s death.
Eddie says that when he got to the lake house, Tripp was passed out and Bea and Blanche were missing. When Eddie realized Bea killed Blanche, he locked her in their panic room. He didn’t want her in jail and wanted to keep her successful business running. He doesn’t really love Jane, but grew fond of her.
Bea and Jane: The two sit down and drink wine. Bea says that Eddie told her that she and Jane were nothing alike, but that he was wrong. Bea claims Eddie was cheating with Blanche and that he invited her to the lake house to kill her. But Jane doesn’t believe the story.
Spoilers for The Wife Upstairs
Bea: After meeting Jane, Bea decides that Eddie still loves her and that Jane is an opportunist who doesn’t really love Eddie. Bea recalls what actually happened on the lake – she drugged both Tripp and Blanche. She took Blanche out in the boat, hit her in the head with a hammer, and dumped her in the water. She had planned to swim to shore and pretend that she tried to save Blanche. But then Eddie showed up and ruined her plan.
Jane is in the process of calling the police when the smoke alarm goes off. Bea realizes that Eddie must have started a fire in the panic room, hoping that the smoke alarm would unlock the door. Bea goes to the panic room to let Eddie out, which spreads the fire to the rest of the house.
Jane: She wakes up in the hospital, remembering that the house burned to the ground. She got out, but both Bea and Eddie died in the fire. The police come to the hospital and tell Jane that their theory is that Eddie killed Blanche, then, as the police realized he’d been at Blanche’s murder scene, burned the house down to kill himself and Jane. Tripp has been exonerated based on video evidence that showed Eddie at the lake house on the night Blanche died. But the police tell her no bodies were found: the fire must have burned everything but a few teeth.
Jane moves in with Emily. One day while walking Emily’s dogs she is approached by Eddie’s lawyer. He tells her that Eddie left her everything in his will. Jane starts over in a new state. One day she think she sees Bea and Eddie, but convinces herself she was only imagining it.
Discussion of The Wife Upstairs
Whoa, there’s a lot here to unpack.
First off, I think The Wife Upstairs would make a perfect book club book. It has the Jane Eyre retelling angle for the English major types, and it’s a thriller for those who are like: just entertain me.
Have you read Jane Eyre? I have, and I found The Wife Upstairs a really clever Jane Eyre retelling that kept many elements of the original while also turning things on their head. In the original, Rochester is blinded in the fire and Jane ends up with him. In The Wife Upstairs, Eddie and Bea are actually the love story (?) and they escape the fire and fake their own deaths. Or do they?
What did you think of the characters? Is Jane a petty thief and opportunist, or just a woman making the best of her rough situation? Did she really love Eddie, or just love the idea of having an easy life?
Eddie also was drawn to Bea’s money, but it seemed like he really did love her in the end. I’m not sure why Eddie left his money to Jane, though.
Bea was also an interesting character. She also overcame a tough childhood with an alcoholic mother and seemed willing to do anything to uphold the shiny new image she’d made for herself. I kept picturing her business as Draper James!
Do you think Eddie and Bea are alive or dead? Could they have both escaped from the house? I guess they both knew the house well enough that … maybe.
Join Our Spoiler Discussion for The Wife Upstairs!
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I just finished this book last night and oh my goodness, it was AMAZING! I seriously could not put this book down and finished it all last night because I was dying to see what happened at the end. There were so many twists and turns throughout this story and every single event that happened was shocking and pulled me in even further. The dynamics and backgrounds of the characters was intense and in depth and led to them fully coming to life as the story unfolds. I’ve never read Jane Eyre and had no idea this was a revision of the classic story and now, after reading this novel, I’m more intrigued to read the original story of Jane Eyre.
Hi Maddie – Thanks so much for coming by and sharing your thoughts. I though TWU was definitely updated and modernized, but in a fun way. If you like classics, I’d try Jane Eyre. Or the movie (made about 10 years ago) was really good too and pretty true to the original.
Finally got to read this and really enjoyed it! It actually reminded me of The Last Mrs Parrish mashed with Gone Girl, hoping you’ve read both! And I liked that though it also reminds me why I can only read so many thrillers as they eventually just remind me of each other
Hey, how are you doing! I’ve been watching you do fun stuff on Instagram. I agree that all these thrillers start to blend together. I did love the nods to Jane Eyre and I liked the way she modernized it!
What is the name of your Instagram account.
I think it’s also Bookworm1858
I just finished the book and I must say I really enjoyed it even though some things didn´t really make much sense to be honest. I doubt that someone who claims that he didn´t even love someone would risk letting anyone into the house and also leaving her everything? What I am wordering though is if they both survived. It should be an open ending but with the way the fire was descripted (there was a wall of fire when she opened the door) I doubt Eddie had any chance to survive… And how would she even get to him through the fire?
Good points. The ending of the original is a bit different. I’m not always a fan of open endings but in this case you could be right.
Me neither, especially since we got POV from Bea as well… if it was only Jane´s POV since the beginning then it would be expected that we would be left wondering like her. I just found this site and I really like it! Do you also have some list of all time favorites somewhere here?
I do have a post on my favorite thrillers but am also working on a thriller newsletter and even more discussion posts.
Eddie made a comment that he knew there was an exit from the panic room. He probably set the fire and ran out the exit; and no one saw him leave the house. How Bea survived is anyone’s guess.
When did he make that comment? I can’t remember this!
Not sure if Debby is subscribed to comments so I will answer.
In one of Eddie’s POV chapters close to the end he’s locked in the panic room and says “There was one guaranteed way out. there always had been. I was the only one who knew it because I had built the house. It was dangerous, stupid even, and possibly deadly.” So I thought maybe the way out is to start a fire?
But then a few chapters later the fire alarm goes off and Bea says: “The panic room didn’t open in case of fire because it was supposed to be a place you could go if there was a fire. Either Eddie didn’t know that or he was betting I would come and let him out.”
Then Jane says she likes to imagine they are still alive, but gives no evidence they are.
Crazy book, I thought it might be pretty straight-forward, but boy was I wrong! The open ending has kept me guessing as to what happened to Bea and Eddie, and if anyone ever deserved a better life. I loved the fact that every character has a dark secret and that no character is perfect. Loved each character and despised it at the same time. A haunting ending and amazing suspense has made me hooked on this awesome thriller forever!
I loved it too! I’m a big Jane Eyre fan and thought it was a great retelling that really put a new spin on the story.
Maybe I don’t understand panic rooms, but why wouldn’t there be a control panel (inside the room) to easily get out of the room?
There should be!
I’m confused as to why she left the boat in the middle of the lake. If Tripp was asleep in the cottage her story of him being on the boat wouldn’t make sense? Wouldn’t it make more sense to drive the boat back and then say she woke up and her bf wasn’t there but Tripp was passed out on the boat.
Also, can’t you open panic rooms from the inside? Why didn’t Bea just let herself out?