This Review of Holly Wainwright’s ‘The Couple Upstairs’ Was Not Written on Any Flights of Stairs
Mel is an overworked, overstressed recently single mother who lives in an apartment block in a gentrified beachside suburb of Sydney, Australia. She’s only just moving on from her ex-husband when the ghost moves into the upstairs apartment—a ghost from Mel’s past. Mel is soon utterly obsessed with the ghost upstairs and his new English backpacker girlfriend. Set during the 2020 pandemic, the lives of Mel and the couple upstairs become more and more intertwined, more connected, with horrifying consequences. Is there such a thing as going too far?
The Couple Upstairs by Holly Wainwright is a 2022 contemporary novel with psychological thriller, drama, and romance elements. I was recommended this book by my mum a while ago. I’ve been on an insane reading blitz this year, and requested a bunch of books on Borrowbox and Libby assuming they’d be available at different times, but alas, no. Suddenly I had nine books to read in a short period of time, which I’d be forced to read in order of due date rather than what I actually wanted to read first. Luckily, the first one was Headcase by Jack Heath, the latest in the delectably amazing Timothy Blake series. And it was pretty great. Then there was The Couple Upstairs, a decent read but largely forgettable. The last book I read in April was a total shitshow: book eight of the Phryne Fisher series, which was a slog that took me over a month to finally finish, and would have been a DNF had I not been listening to the audiobook.
So what does all this preamble—this preamble you likely didn’t read in your haste to scroll to the bottom of the page and check out my review for The Couple Upstairs—lead to? Well, it means that The Couple Upstairs was a complex book, a decent read, sandwiched in between a great book (Headcase—just shy of four stars) and a mediocre drag (Urn Burial—two stars).
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