The Wife Upstairs by Freida McFadden

Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into maybe my 5th or 6th (honestly could be more) Freida McFadden book for the year. I think at this point it’s pretty fair to say that I am a fan of hers, and that’s just because I have yet to pick up a book of hers that I didn’t enjoy. Continuing on this I dive into The Wife Upstairs a drama-filled thriller with suspicious characters who bring loads of toxic behaviour. A factor of Freida’s that I enjoy and is in The Wife Upstairs is the difficulty of knowing if our narrator is very reliable or not creating this constant suspense as we try to figure out who is telling the truth.

Main Characters:
– Sylvia: A young woman who recently left her long-time partner and is now trying to find her way in the world alone, is offered a job by Adam Barnett a popular author whose wife after a medical incident is left almost fully paralyzed and bed bound to take care of and keep her company, through simple communications from Victoria Sylvia starts to see that everything is their marriage may not be all rosy

– Victoria Barnett: Is unable to move, take care of herself, and really speak after an accident, gives Sylvia her diary from when she was able to do all of those things in the hopes that she will understand what’s been going on with her and her husband all this time and before she ended up in this situation

– Adam Barnett: A kind man who after finding his young wife in a broken state dedicates the rest of his life to taking care of her, hires Sylvia to keep her company and is unaware of everything Victoria is communicating to her behind closed doors and if it matches up to the same reality that he knows

– Freddy: Sylvia’s long-time boyfriend who after a messy end to their relationship is constantly trying to get her back before she goes to live with Adam and Victoria

My Review

If you’ve read The Only One Left by Riley Sager and enjoyed it you will definitely enjoy The Wife Upstairs by Freida McFadden as the two books carry a similar (but not) plot line and a similar creepiness to each book in which we are set in a cold home that was meant to hold much more life in it then it does. I recently read Do Not Disturb another of Freida’s books not too long ago and that one continues to stay at the bottom for me in terms of all of her books I’ve read. I can’t totally say where on the scale The Wife Upstairs sits for me but it’s not my favourite of hers, that’s definitely not to make it seem as though the book is bad because it definitely is not, but I’ve definitely enjoyed a few of her other reads a bit more.

I think what it was for me in The Wife Upstairs was just how terrible each character was. The book follows Sylvia as she tries to get back on her feet after leaving a long-term relationship, tired of the toxicity and issues within it she’s looking for a fresh start. Running into the wildly handsome Adam Barnett at a café she expects that she may come to ask her number, instead, he offers a job. He needs someone to come spend some time in his home with his severely paralyzed wife who after an accident is left confined to their home. Sylvia takes on the job expecting to live in the lap of luxury for a while and enjoy some time away from her ex. Getting to the house and spending some time with Victoria Sylvia soon finds that she may not be as incapable as everyone makes her out to be, and after pointing her to a drawer one evening Sylvia finds secrets that she may never have wanted to crack open. Sylvia is thrown back and forth between the turmoil of Adam and Victoria’s relationship post and pre-accident and is forced to try and place on her own who is telling the truth, and why exactly the other is lying. I don’t want to get much into what exactly each character does that makes them terrible but it becomes clear as we go on through the book that no one perspective or narration is one we the reader can fully trust because each of these people has some nasty skeletons in the closet.

Overall I landed on rating The Wife Upstairs a 7.5/10. Despite the few flaws, it is a deliciously riveting book that because of all of these terrible people, you don’t want to put down because you’re dying to see what bomb is going to be dropped next. I really enjoyed how twisty this book was and how you really couldn’t see what was going to happen next and how it was coming. I did guess a few things that would come up in the book but what I didn’t guess was how they were going to play out or what effect it was going to have on the rest of the book. The constant twists and never really knowing what was coming next made it that I didn’t want to put the book down. I’ll speak a bit more on things in the spoiler section since it’s hard to say much without giving it away but the ending was a bit predictable, but I think it was because I had just read a book that had a really similar ending to it so I kind of felt like I knew what was coming next (isn’t The Only One Left btw I won’t say what book it is so I don’t give it away in case others have read it). The ending wasn’t bad at all but just based on how everything was going in the book you could definitely see it coming.

Has anyone else read The Wife Upstairs by Freida McFadden or any of her other books? What did you think?

*** Don’t read any further if you don’t want to read any spoilers***

I think something everyone could see coming is that Sylvia not that long into her time working for Adam and Victoria eventually starts sleeping with Adam. It left this horrible taste in my mouth when it came to Sylvia for a few reasons. She’s got Victoria’s diary which she gave to her for a specific reason. In the diary, she reads about how in love the two were before Victoria got hurt. So she knows that Victoria isn’t as disabled as she makes it seem, she knows the woman was very in love with her husband, and she proceeds to still sleep with him… in Victoria’s house… in her bed?!? Please that is so absolutely fucked up. I don’t know what type of person you have to be to do that but it isn’t a good one. Not only does she start sleeping with him the two essentially start a relationship together!

Once she gets into the parts of the diary where things start to turn bad in the relationship she still sleeps with Adam and pretends that Victoria didn’t just write about how he gaslighted the hell out of her and then financially abused her.

There are so many twists and turns that I really don’t want to get into it all but it ends the way a lot of us thought it would. With Adam gaslighting and manipulating Sylvia into believing he is a good man who only crippled his wife so that he could stay safe from her, not to control her or anything, she lets him get away with killing Victoria. It’s only when she figures everything out does Adam tries to kill her only to in turn be saved by Freddy, the man she could never really trust. I don’t know it was kind of a weird ending but I guess expected it because the fact that Sylvia ever believed Adam over Victoria in the first place was just a slap because what do you mean you trust this screwed-up man? I guess she learned her lesson in being messy.

It was definitely an unsatisfying ending but not in a bad way. In a way the people who should have won don’t, so I guess like reality? The ending made sense though for how stupid Sylvia was throughout the book. Boy did that girl and her decisions irk the hell out of me.

I hope you enjoyed this review! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebook reviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!