The Girl Upstairs
The Girl Upstairs
By: Jessica R. Patch
[Fulfills prompt: ‘Book without swearing’ for the Shelf Reflection 2026 Reading Challenge]
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2026]
“We all harbor secrets, cover up sins with lies and learn how to deceive others and ourselves.”
“‘Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.’”— Benjamin Franklin (the classic guy to quote in your thrillers)
Another great read from one of my favorite new (to me) authors, Jessica Patch!
This is a standalone psychological thriller set during Halloween in Cold Harbor, Maine— a Star’s Hollow look-a-like— with a haunted house, a marriage on the rocks, cold case child abductions, and an ex-detective narrator harboring secrets (probably coldly)!
I’m usually not keen on psychological thriller tropes that are basically just— ‘is the main lady crazy or not crazy?’ Those tend to feel boring, repetitive, drawn out, and not real surprising. But I need not have worried— Patch delivered a more layered, suspenseful version of the trope with plenty of surprises and a great redemption arc.
I think I still like The Garden Girls and The Other Sister a bit better than this one, but this, by all means, is still a great read!
While it did have a slower start, it picked up in the second half and took me down the path I was hoping she would go. I figured out one of the twists by 17% of the way through, but it was not the only one and the other ones surprised me!
“I think people remember what suits them— and twist the rest to fit whatever story they need to believe. Sometimes it’s to erase what they’ve done, sometimes to justify it. We all have our own way of evicting the truth we can’t live with and redecorating that space with the version we wish had happened instead.”
Our main character is Gwen. We get clues that something in her recent past forced her to leave her position as detective. Her, her husband Stephen, and baby Tara are relocating to the small town of Cold Harbor to start fresh and leave the past behind.
But the house they move into has a history of tragic and mysterious deaths and Gwen’s detective nature cannot pass up the opportunity to investigate.
“something evil happened here. I feel it in the floors, in the walls, in the silence.”
But also because she hears phantom baby cries, jumpropes, bouncing balls, discovers the words ‘I AM NOT CRAZY’ carved into her attic floor, and finds a hidden room under the stairs. Also a human bone was just found on their property.
“Since the beginning. Since Abel’s blood screamed for justice in the dirt. Whoever was buried in my woods— disturbed, hidden, taken— they deserve the same. Justice. A name. A reckoning.”
Stephen is not too happy about her interest.
“‘Don’t ruin this for us. We have a lot to lose, Gwen. You know it more than I do.’”
We gather she has an obsessive personality and they already agreed to lay low in this new place lest someone look too deeply into their backgrounds. She is also battling depression, grief, and anxiety from a series of miscarriages and a particularly painful experience with children on one of her last cases.
Hence, the psychological part of this book: is Gwen hallucinating because of her meds and trauma? Is she reading too far into things that are mere coincidences? Can we trust her judgment and gut feelings? What secrets is she hiding? Are the townspeople really all hiding some sort of nefarious operation she’s poking around? Is she in actual danger? What is real and what is not? Who can she trust?
The layers that Patch constructs help supplement the internal struggles that Gwen is wrestling with.
One particular layer is that she develops a friendship with a gal named Cady who is a barista slash true-crime podcaster looking into the disappearance of her older sister, Candy— in the spotlight again now that a small human bone has been found. (Having been born after Candy went missing at 13, Cady never knew her sister.) Gwen and Cady team up to look into the bone and her house and see if there is any connection or information that could lead to finding out what happened to Candy.
There are concrete pieces of evidence that her and Cady discover so not everything in the book is abstract, which is nice. We’re still wondering what’s going on with Gwen, but we have this real mystery we’re also trying to solve.
Another layer to the book is on the character development side— her marriage. We know things are not great, but we don’t yet know why. There are possibilities of infidelity on both sides, but we don’t find out any details until later in the story.
“I can’t deny that ours is walking a fine line, a loose and flimsy line that stretches across a chasm that’s graveyard-dark. A place all dead marriages go to die.”
I do appreciate what Patch decided to do with their marriage. I don’t want to reveal too much but I like the arc of the marriage storyline and how it’s portrayed and worked through.
“Is solving this mystery worth losing my marriage?”
Similarly to the marriage storyline, we have Gwen’s grief that she is working through. She experienced three miscarriages and a stillbirth. Knowing my faith journey and personal grief with my own miscarriage, I relate to a piece of what Gwen’s experiencing and the struggle with believing God is good.
Some of what is connected to her pain and her experiences as a homicide detective following that pain is hard to read. As with Patch’s other books (which involve serial killers) there are certainly parts of this book that don’t shy away from the darkness in our world where people abuse other people. Where tragedies aren’t just fictional hypotheticals.
That’s one of the things I like about Patch’s books, though. They expose and acknowledge real evil, but they also point to light. To redemption. To grace and second chances. To truth and justice. She doesn’t always present an overt gospel message, but you can find it in these pages. In the person she saw as an enemy but was actually a protector. In the person she thought abandoned her but was actually there the whole time.
“Darkness bumps into us all. It’s what we do with the darkness that matters. Those who live under its shadow adopt its attributes, but those who look to the light and let that sweet light transform them lift the weight of the oppression… they use that for good things.”
Switching gears, let’s talk about birds. (I’m great at segues.)
I hate them.
But also, they’re a little fascinating.
I don’t know if authors are like— I heard this crazy thing about birds today, I’m going to put it in my book. Or if they’re like— I need an unusual fact about birds. Let’s go find one… but I genuinely enjoy discovering random trivia and facts, so however they find their way into books, I approve.
Patch drops some wild knowledge about black-capped chickadees and crows.
Turns out crows hold grudges. Generational grudges. They can recognize human faces and will remember the ones that wronged them. They will harass those humans and teach their offspring to do the same. I don’t know if this was discovered before or after a group became a ‘murder’ of crows, but they earn their name! Seriously. Birds are the worst. Do yourself a favor and avoid crows.
On the flip side chickadees are helpful little creatures that scientists study to learn about memory encoding and neural plasticity.
“‘The part of their brain that supports spatial memory— the hippocampus— expands in the fall in order to bank memories, and then it shrinks back to its normal size in spring. These little birds are special— they’re survivors.’”
When chickadees cache food, certain neurons fire that basically create a barcode that later reactivates when the bird comes back for the food. Some make up to 5000 stashes per day. This is an essential part of their ability to survive a winter.
I’m always intrigued by memory research. If there is a documentary on this bird, hook me up, I am pretty sure I’d watch it.
If you read this book in a book club, it would be an interesting discussion to see how you can connect these contrasting bird traits to the actual characters and the plot of the story. I’m sure Patch chose them with intention. I won’t share my thoughts because of spoilers, but here’s a quote to get you thinking:
“I think of the chickadees— how they shed old memories like feathers, making space for new ones. Maybe that’s why they seem so weightless. There’s freedom in the way they flit from branch to branch, trust in their eyes, joy in the beat of their tiny wings. Not like the crows. The oppressive birds hold on.”
And one last quote, that doesn’t necessarily have plot significance, but I just really liked it. It’s about our expectations. Our idols.
“‘Sometimes, we see something, and we fixate on it— dreaming about all the possibilities it holds. We think it’s going to change us, make us new, give us hope. We build it up so high in our minds, it becomes like… I don’t know… a kind of sanctuary. A place of worship. But then, when we finally get there, when we bow to it, it’s nothing like we imagined. We’re disillusioned.’”
Our hope is only as good as the thing/person it’s in. And there is only one Person we can worship who can offer real transformation and real hope. (Even though he created crows…) Everything else will disappoint.
Recommendation
Unless you have strong triggers with child abuse and miscarriage, I would definitely recommend. And even if those are triggers for you, they are not glorified or used gratuitously in this book. I think you will still find some justice and light in this book.
I really enjoy Jessica Patch’s thrillers and— I’ve said this before, but it’s still true— am glad to have found an author who can write great, twisty thrillers without swearing and sexual content, thus making it a great option for both those who prefer Christian fiction and those who just want a clean thriller.
The Girl Upstairs will probably give you new fears of park rangers and crows but otherwise it’s a fantastic thriller about secrets and justice and those that help us feel safe.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**
This book releases in April, 2026. You can pre-order/order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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