The Stranger Upstairs

 

In a book that’s sure to make one rethink every future home-buying decision, debut author Lisa Matlin has written a super creepy story that examines what happens when a homebuyer’s intentions don’t line up with what the house itself wants! 

Successful lifestyle influencer and author Sarah Slade and husband Joe have purchased Black Wood House, where forty years ago Bill Campbell murdered his wife Susan with a hammer and attempted to kill his daughter before ending his own life. Sarah’s ambition is to renovate this murder house and rely on a future buyer’s morbid curiosity to make a tidy profit.

In reality, Sarah is trying to escape events from her past and keep her disintegrating marriage from unraveling further.  The more she tries to control her husband and her new home, the harder they both seem to rebel against her. It’s as if the house resents her as much as Joe does. Maybe even more.

As menacing notes appear around her home and her new neighbors eye her with suspicion or outright contempt, Sarah’s paranoia steadily increases.  Floorboards in the attic creak at night, her cat Reaper begins acting strangely, a builder she’s hired has a bizarre accident, and to make it all worse, she learns of another mysterious disappearance related to her new home that no one in town will talk about or even acknowledge.

What starts off as a simple house-flipping scenario turns into an increasingly bizarre fever dream from which there may be no escape for her. Can she outrun the ghosts of her past and present before she loses her mind  … or her life?  

I listened to this on audio while reading along on my Kindle.  The story is told almost entirely from the single POV of Sarah, admirably narrated by Fiona Hardingham. I would’ve appreciated some variation in her male character voices - they all sounded identical - but apart from that I thought she did a good job. 

There were interspersed news sections that detail a new crime that was committed at Black Wood House … the reader isn’t told who the victims are until much later, adding a nice suspenseful mystery to the story. The book definitely leads you to think in a certain direction, but kudos to Matlin for taking the story in a direction I NEVER suspected! The ending reveal was such a clever switch up from what I’ve come to expect from stories like this. I grew a little bit tired of hearing only from Sarah for so much of the book, but the ending made up for it!

This was a solid debut effort from Lisa Matlin, and I’ll definitely watch for what she writes next. One last thing: the author’s note is really thoughtful and worth a moment to read!

★★★ ½  (rounded to 4)

Thanks to Bantam, NetGalley, and author Lisa M. Matlin for this digital ARC to honestly review and to my local library and Libby for the audiobook. It’s out now.