The Stranger Upstairs

My September Book of the Month selection was The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin (the other options were The Intern by Michele Campbell, Evil Eye by Etaf Rum, You, Again by Kate Goldbeck, and The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger).  I once again defaulted to the thriller and this one is incredibly atmospheric with a huge twist and I couldn't put it down! Sarah Slade is a therapist with a best-selling self-help book and a large following on social media. She decides to buy a large Victorian mansion located in a wealthy suburb of Melbourne because the price is too good to pass up even though the house has been empty for over 40 years because it is the site of a notorious murder-suicide. According to neighbors, Bill Campbell began acting more and more erratically until he woke up one day and bashed his wife's skull with a hammer, attempted to do the same to his teenage daughter who was able to get away, and then took his own life by overdosing on tranquilizers. There are those who believe that Black Wood House drove Campbell crazy but Sarah sees her planned renovations as a great opportunity for blog content and as a distraction from her marital troubles. However, Sarah soon experiences strange and unexplained occurrences while in the house and her life spirals out of control as the many secrets she has tried to hide from her past come to light.  She begins behaving as erratically as Campbell once did but is it the house or her own demons causing her break with reality? The narrative is mostly from Sarah's POV in the present with flashbacks to her past, which definitely kept my interest piqued because I wanted to know more about the disturbing incidents between Sarah and her sister, and newspaper and web articles about events as they happen, which does much to create suspense because they imply that Sarah could be a victim or a villain. I enjoyed Sarah as a character because she is so complex and I was impressed by the fact that Matlin uses her own experiences with mental health to inform her actions and motivations (be sure to read the author's note at the end). I also really enjoyed the house itself as a character because there are some really scary sequences that will keep you feeling very unsettled (just in time for Halloween). I have to admit that I found the resolution to be a bit disappointing because it seems so mundane after all of the build up but then there is a major twist in the epilogue that made me question everything! I've heard complaints from other readers that there are too many loose ends but I liked the open-ended conclusion because it kept me thinking about it for days. This is a unique take on the haunted house genre and I highly recommend it to fans of psychological thrillers.