The Girl Upstairs by Jessica Patch New Release and Book Review

 

Help me congratulate Jessica on her new book! Here’s the blurb:

She bought this house to save her marriage. Unearthing its secrets might just claim her life.

Gwen McDaniel’s life is broken. But she knows the perfect place to fix it. Cold Harbor, Maine, an idyllic small town with views of Acadia National Park, is where she used to vacation with her parents as a child. Here, she and Steven can start over, renovating their cliff-side fixer-upper while patching up their marriage. Soon, everything will be better.

Except from the moment they arrive, Gwen sees and hears things, and it’s more than just the drafts and shadows that are part of any old house. Steven downplays her fears, warning her not to fixate on problems as she has in the past. But Gwen spent years as a homicide detective, and her instincts don’t lie. Something happened here. Proof comes when she rips up the attic’s carpet to discover a chilling message carved into the wood underneath.

As Gwen delves into the history of the house and the Cold Harbor community, she begins to piece the fragments together. And gradually, a terrifying picture emerges: A missing girl. A house of horrors. And a dark, decades-old nightmare that is more haunting than Gwen ever imagined…

 

REVIEW:

All Gwen and Steven wanted to do was start over in a new town and escape from all the ‘bad’ that happened in Baltimore. What was the bad, though? I liked how this author kept dropping hints but never really revealing what happened in Baltimore. It made me want to keep reading to find out what happened, the how, the why, the when, where, and who all was involved. I also liked Gwen’s internal monologue – that was spot on given the situations she found herself in. I think Gwen was the kind of character who covered up her grief with humor, a lot of us do, so it makes her very relatable.

Cady, the owner of a coffee shop, wanted to start a podcast about true crime, so, of course, Gwen being a former police detective was right there to help her, but the more they discovered, the more grisly things became.

The house in Cold Harbor didn’t give up its secrets easily.

I liked the ghost story contained within the house in Cold Harbor. And the hints (as I mentioned before) dabbled throughout until the twists started almost had my head turning in a 360-degree direction.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Maybe things really do go bump in the night. Maybe there really are apparitions that get stuck earthside before they can exit.

And Adrian Rivera, the retired doctor, who lived across the lake - I developed a soft spot for his character.

I have to say I was beginning to figure out the whodunnit in this tale, but I wasn’t sure all the ins and outs and how it would all piece together.

Overall, I enjoyed this read for its ghostliness and how the whodunnits were exposed. Many, many secrets are contained within these pages.