Audiobook Review: The Wife Upstairs by Freida McFadden
The Wife Upstairs
Author: Freida McFadden
Narrator: Angie Kane
Published: March 23, 2020
Audiobook: 9 hours 46 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: January 22-28, 2026
Jessica’s Rating: 4 stars
Book Description:
Victoria Barnett has it all: a great career as a nurse practitioner, a handsome and loving husband, a beautiful home in the suburbs, and a plan to fill it with children. Life is perfect—or so it seems. Then she’s in a terrible accident…and everything falls apart. Now Victoria is unable to walk. She can’t feed or dress herself. She can’t even speak. She is confined to the top floor of her house with 24-hour care.
Sylvia Robinson is hired by Victoria’s husband to help care for her. But it turns out Victoria isn’t as impaired as Sylvia was led to believe. There’s a story Victoria desperately wants to tell…if only she could get the words out. Then Sylvia discovers Victoria’s diary hidden away in a drawer. And what’s inside is shocking.
Jessica’s Review:
Yes, there are similarities to The Wife Upstairs and Verity: An injured wife, a young woman hired to take care of her, a secret diary and many things that are not as they appear. Otherwise, they are different novels. A huge difference is that The Wife Upstairs is not sexually explicit and Verity is. In some ways I wish I had read The Wife Upstairs before Verity, but this wasn’t the case for me.
The narrator Angie Kane did a great job with her performances of both Victoria and Sylvia. I did have issues trying to understand when Victoria was attempting to talk to Sylvia, but that is what would happen in actuality with Victoria’s handicaps. I did find myself wishing I had a physical copy to see what she was trying to say.
The novel goes between Sylvia’s POV and Victoria’s diary. As with McFadden’s other novels, The Wife Upstairs is a quick and easy to read. I enjoyed it and like usual did not see the ending coming! I am still working on McFadden’s backlog of novels, while listening to her newer ones that keep coming out.