The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

Hey, it’s Diego.

If you read psychological thrillers, you already know about the phenomenon of The Housemaid by Freida McFadden.

You may have yet to read it even if you know of it.

Let me give you my spoiler-free unbiased review.

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The Housemaid by Freida McFadden Review

The Housemaid tells the story of Millie, a recent parolee who is homeless and jobless. Without a job, Millie may be forced to go back to jail. And she’s burnt through other jobs already so she’s getting desperate. When she gets hired by Nina and Andrew as a live-in housemaid she believes she has hit the jackpot. But she soon realizes that Nina is a tough person to work for. She starts with weird requests that snowball into gaslighting and then onto full-on crazy demands.

The Housemaid falls squarely into the Domestic Thriller genre, as 90% of the story takes place inside a single-family home.

I found the writing simple and easy to read. I was able to finish the book in less than a week. When thinking back to why, I compared it to something like Gone Girl and it helps that past exposition for the main character is kept to a minimum. Meaning that we get very few and rare moments where the main character has to talk directly to the reader to put things into context by relating a long-winded story about themselves or another character. We discover things as Millie does and she makes you work to get that past from her. This kept me engaged in what was happening now and wanting to know more from Millie. Coupled with the short chapters, I can see how this was a page-turner.

That said there was a lot of repetition. I suspect this was done to ensure the reader followed along but it felt patronizing at times. The style was also functional and we didn’t get any vivid imagery from any of it, it was used effectively to get the story moving. Which is fine with me, I just wished the start was speedier. A slow start is a staple of Freida McFadden’s books.

It surprised me that there was an element of romance in this story. I’m not sure if this helped the book sales, but I think it complemented the story rather well. That said, there were no explicit sex scenes. The language was clean, no swearing either.

The book contains descriptions of the aftermath of violence and murder (it’s a thriller after all) but none of the scenes in the book were actively describing it as it happened.

The story is told mainly from one perspective in a single timeline: Millie’s. But we do get some chapters from the point of view of another character later in the story and some of their backstory.

One thing that helped with readability as well was Millie’s sense of humor. Tension scenes were contrasted with her comments on the helplessness of the situations she was put in and even though it didn’t make me laugh, I did smile on occasion. This was quite refreshing as “serious” thrillers sometimes go too hard in the opposite direction and end up being downers. Unfortunately, it may have gone too far into the other camp as well because I didn’t feel it was as thrilling as other thrillers.

The story structure is quite flat, with very few twists throughout but with a big twist towards the end. Most of the earlier chapters are used to build tension and develop the characters and the later ones focus on the aftermath of conflict and the bigger twist.

So, what about the ending? (No spoilers obviously)

Unfortunately for me, The Housemaid’s payoff at the end fell flat in that regard but I did like staying with the characters a bit more in the aftermath and find out what happened to each one. And it did leave the door open for sequels, with two already out.

Overall, I enjoyed The Housemaid and would happily pick up another book from Freida McFadden.

The Perfect Couple on Netflix

In other news, I binged The Perfect Couple on Netflix this week and it was such a great show. I can’t recommend it enough.

It’s a short limited series based on Elin Hilderbrand's novel of the same name. In it, we follow Amelia who is about to marry into one of the wealthiest families on Nantucket, until a shocking death derails her wedding — and turns everyone into a suspect.

I love these murder mystery kinds of setups where everyone is a suspect and you try to guess who the killer is.

Highly bingeable.

That’s all for this week.

See you next time.

— Diego Dunne

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