The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Hawkins, Rachel. The Wife Upstairs. Alloy Entertainment. 2021.

The novel begins in the first-person present with Jane narrating the story of her dog-walking job in the wealthy neighborhood of Thornfield Estates. One day, she walks one of her dogs in front of her favorite house and is nearly hit when Eddie Rochester backs out of his driveway in his sportscar. He invites her in for coffee and they have instant chemistry. He tells her that he is going to get a new dog and that she should come work for him. Jane agrees. She learns that Eddie’s wife, Bea, died in a boating accident last year along with her best friend, Blanche, whose husband, Tripp, Jane works for. Tripp is terribly depressed and constantly drunk, but Eddie seems ready to move on from the tragedy. Jane researches Bea online and discovers she owned a huge company called Southern Manors and was incredibly wealthy and beautiful. Eddie invites Jane out to dinner and they start a relationship. After several months, Jane pretends she is leaving town and Eddie asks her to move in with him to stop her.

The second part of the novel is told in both diary entries and by a third-person present narrator. Bea, locked in Eddie’s attic, writes inside a novel Eddie brought for her to read. She writes that Eddie killed Blanche and then locked her inside their hidden panic room. The narrator focuses in on a scene in which Blanch and Bea went out to dinner and argued about Bea’s engagement to Eddie, whom she had only known for a few months.

Jane settles into Eddie’s house and tells the women of Thornfield Estates that she and Eddie are dating. They invite her to join the Neighborhood Beautification Committee, but Jane realizes they will not accept her until she and Eddie are married. She once again threatens to apply to grad school and leave, but he proposes to her to get her to stay. Jane is happy, but then she runs into Tripp who drunkenly tells her that Eddie killed Bea and Blanche. A detective stops by the house to speak with Eddie, furthering Jane’s suspicions.

Back in time, Bea meets Eddie on a beach in Hawaii and instantly falls in love with him. Much later, she and Eddie go out to dinner with Tripp and Blanche. Blanche and Tripp fight all night, and then Bea catches Eddie and Blanche flirting. In her diary, Bea writes about how her and Eddie begin to have long conversations when he drops off food for her.

Eddie tells Jane that the police found Blanche’s body in the lake. She had a fracture on her skull that suggested murder. Jane begins to worry about her past coming to light. Her old roommate, John, starts getting calls from Phoenix for someone named Helen Burns. He realizes that is Jane’s real name and begins to bribe Jane for money. Jane and Eddie take a trip to the lake house and Eddie acts suspiciously. When they get back to town, Jane seeks out Tripp and asks him for more information. Eddie finds out about her meeting and tells her he wishes she would trust him. Tripp is arrested for the murders of Bea and Blanche.

In her diary, Bea explains that she seduces Eddie and gets him to have sex with her in part to escape and in part because she still loves him. The narrator shows Bea’s suspicions about Tripp and Blanche rising. In order to get back at them, she sleeps with Tripp in a closet at a party.

John continues to blackmail Jane, so she breaks down and calls the number from Phoenix and discovers her biological aunt is looking for her. She says she is not Helen Burns and tells John he cannot blackmail her any longer. She reveals she was placed with a foster-family in Phoenix headed by the cruel Mr. Brock who allowed her foster-sister to die from pneumonia. To get back at him, Jane had let him die when he had a heart attack in front of her.

In her diary, Bea writes that Eddie tells her about Jane. She decides to finish her journal and put it in the pocket of Eddie’s coat in the hopes that Jane might find it and rescue her. The narrator flips back to Bea’s childhood of poverty and alcoholism. She got herself a scholarship to the exclusive boarding school Ivy Ridge where she met Blanche, the most beautiful and popular girl of all. Bea imitated Blanche in everything, so much so that Blanche insisted they go to separate colleges. Then, when Bea started her furniture company, she modeled it after Blanche’s personal taste.

Jane finds Bea’s diary and the panic room. She goes inside and finds Bea. Eddie comes in the door.

The novel switches to the perspective of Eddie, who walks into the panic room and is knocked unconscious by Jane, who throws a silver pineapple at his head. He remembers how he first met Bea and wanted to con her for her money, but he fell in love with her genuinely. However, she started working long hours and he started flirting with Blanche to make her jealous. Then Blanche told him that Bea had killed her mother. Eddie had repeated the information to Bea, who had then made plans to kill Blanche. Eddie showed up, though, and saw everything. He pretended to be sympathetic, but then he locked her up in the panic room because he could not bear to turn her in. Eddie stands up and decides to try to save Jane.

Jane tells Bea they should call the police. Bea says she wants a glass of wine. The novel switches to Bea’s perspective. She remembers killing both her mother and Blanche. Then the smoke alarm goes off and she realizes Eddie is in danger. She runs upstairs to save him.

Jane runs out of the house to save herself. Bea and Eddie never come out, so she assumes they are dead. The police assume that Eddie killed both Bea and Blanche, then tried to kill Jane in a fire. Jane inherits all of Eddie and Bea’s money. Jane buys a cottage in the woods and moves in with her dog, Adele, but likes to imagine Eddie and Bea on a beach together somewhere.