A really creepy book and I enjoyed every part of this book. Eleanor and Richard buy an old Victorian house in London as a family home and investment, and move in with their 2 young daughters Rosie and Isobel. The only way they can afford it is to take a lodger for the basement and so Zoe moves in. Soon strange things start happening to each of them, Eleanor says the house is making her ill, Rosie starts playing with an imaginary friend called Girl, Zoe starts getting the feeling of being crushed in her sleep and Richard feels things are being moved in his study without explanation. Eleanor trys to find out what happened to the previous owners and why they left in such a hurry.
All the main adult characters are unhappy in their lives and careers so is the house feeding off of this negativity? I liked all the characters but I found I wanted to scream at Richard as it seemed he was in denial of what was happening in the house, and wanted to provide a more reasonable explanation to Eleanor's and Zoe's.
Would recommend.

This is a well-written horror novel that takes a familiar premise and writes the story with true style, which keeps you turning the pages right to the end.

This book sounded great. had a brilliant cover. It started off so well. But very quickly got very boring and went down hill. It was so hard to read after i was only through the book about 20% we need less of Eleanors anxieties as its not fun to read about it

A clever yet strange and unsettling read. Well written and disturbing in equal measure

What do you want out of a horror novel? Do you want blood and guts or do you want a psychologically disturbing read? With The Upstairs Room you get the latter, this is a novel which throughout has an unnerving quality to it. The house itself could be any one on any street and its' occupants are living unremarkable lives. Eleanor and Richard are a typical modern couple, looking to buy in London, and so when they discover a house at a price they can't ignore, they buy and move their family in. They take on a lodger in the form of Zoe, to support their finances, Zoe again is looking for something more in her life, having recently broke up from a relationship. However, Eleanor starts to sense that things aren't quite right and we witness the disturbing atmosphere within the house mainly through Eleanor's eyes.

The novel looks in depth at the characters lives, their desires, their quest for betterment and the relationships between them and their social circles. It is a novel that dwells upon the problems people face on a daily basis, job security, job satisfaction, home life, how others see us and what we want out of life. It is also a modern day ghost story which is filled with a sense of dread.

My favourite book genres include mysteries, thrillers, fantasy and magical realism but this book to me doesn't jus fit into some of these categories, it can also be described as a contemporary horror which is something I don't usually read but I loved this book on the whole.

It follows the Eleanor and Richard as well as their two daughters as they move into a new house in East London but to make ends meet they have to have a lodger, Zoe. This household is unusual in more than one way and it makes for an interesting and unnerving mystery to figure out the untold happenings in the house as well as it's previous occupants, mainly a child called Emily.

The book is a mixture of a contemporary novel about unhealthy relationships, growing up and messy, complicated life changes that we all go through as well as a horror/mystery where the house and it's previous occupants seem to be causing unusual things to happen. I didn't know much about the book but it turned out to be more of a contemporary than I thought it would be but it's also much darker too and unfortunately I read most of this before bed and I kept having to dissuade myself from turning on the light!

It was so incredibly quick and easy to get through, I wanted to find out what was happening and the outcome but the process to get there was quite repetitive and a little tedious especially as the ending to me seemed a little too neat and convenient. I would recommend it based on the atmospheric, horror elements but it's not something I'd read again.

I think my high expectation contributed a bit to my disappointment with this book. Also, I thought that this would be a modern ghost story, but it turned out to be a relationship drama with a hint of a ghost story. Now the book isn't badly written, but it was not what I was after. If I wanted to read about problems in a relationship or finding the right man to love would have chosen a book that dealt with that. I wanted a creepy ghost story. This book is neither creepy nor chilling.

Most of the books "haunting" are about Eleanor thinking the house making her sick. She tries to spend most of her time away from the house while trying to make Richard, her husband, believe her. But, he's busy sneaking down into the basement when their lodger Zoe isn't there. I kept on reading the book wanting for something to happen. But, it never did. There was a scene towards the end when I finally thought "this is it, now the story will get more intense," but it was just a false alarm.

The Upstairs Room is a ghost story for people that can't handle a book that really deals with ghosts. It showed promise in the beginning, but in the end, it was a letdown. I mean there was a moment in the book, when Eleanor was thinking back to when Richard proposed to her in Venice and all I could think of is this all the book is about, recollections to the past?

I was not the right reader for this book. However, if this feels like a book for you go ahead, but don't expect to be frighted.

The Upstairs Room is both a tense mystery and a gripping novel about happiness and knowing when something isn’t working. When Eleanor and Richard move to a Victorian house in London Fields with their two young daughters, it is meant to be a great opportunity for them, even though the cost of potential renovations mean they have to take a lodger, the at-a-loose-end Zoe. Eleanor quickly thinks there is something wrong with the house, something connected with the mysterious wall scribblings in the upstairs room done by an ‘Emily’.

The novel is a character-driven mystery, focusing on the lives of Eleanor, Richard, and Zoe and their discontentments both in and outside of the house. That doesn’t mean that Murray-Browne does not keep up the tension, with eerie moments and an unnerving combination of obvious and unexplainable mysteries throughout. Problems like a lack of communication and the perils of the London housing market exacerbate issues as they attempt to live in the house that Eleanor comes to believe doesn’t want her there. The style is easy to devour and the combination of characters and ambiguous mystery make it a good book to sit down with and be drawn into.

In some ways, The Upstairs Room is like a slow burn horror film, the kind focused on the happiness and lives of the characters as much as the potential mystery and threat, or The Shining rewritten for the modern London housing crisis. It will also appeal to anyone who enjoys reading about character relationships and life uncertainty, with a background mystery plot and not too much overt revelation, but rather an understated approach to the genre.