The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin

Combine one-part haunted house with one-part unreliable narrator to equal a chilling debut novel, The Stranger Upstairs, by Lisa M. Matlin, due out September 12. Sarah Slade, who works as a media influencer and a mental health counselor, decides the best way to start over with her life and her crumbling marriage is to buy and flip a house in which people were murdered because she believes she will make a ton on the investment.

Apparently, nothing fazes Sarah, an unlikable character, as she has chosen to make her bedroom the same second floor one in which a married woman was bludgeoned with a hammer, the  blood stain on the floor firmly entrenched even after decades have gone by.  Undaunted, Sarah sleeps alone there as her husband Joe Cosgrove plays video games until 3 a.m. and sleeps on the couch downstairs in the living room.

Not long after moving in, Sarah begins hearing footsteps in the attic. Then she starts finding sticky notes on places like her laptop. She already knows that the neighbors have long wanted Sarah’s house bulldozed because of the murder that happened there decades ago. In talking to one neighbor, Sarah learns that someone had purchased the home before her, and that woman was missing along with her dog.

Like those before her, Matlin has crafted a story in which the haunted house is just as much a character as Sarah and Joe. A bloody hammer in a cradle and footprints in the dust  in the top-most floor add to Sarah’s belief that there is a stranger in the attic. However, the attic is not the only thing harboring secrets as Sarah and Joe have skeletons in their past as well.

Lisa M. Matlin switched from songwriting as a guitarist in a rock band to story writing. She lives in Australia, the setting for her first novel. She offers a narrative about her own struggles with mental health at the end of the book.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting September 4, 2023.

I would like to thank Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.