The Housemaid - Freida McFadden - ★★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Freida McFadden

GENRE: Domestic Thriller

SERIES: Housemaid, #1

RATING: 4.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A bit farfetched but it still provided me with almost everything I look for in a thriller.

Story:

Millie has just been hired as the housemaid to rich Nina Winchester.

Millie is hiding a secret from Nina in order to get the job as she is desperate. She decides to become the perfect housemaid so that she can earn her way out of her maniacal employer’s clutches.

Nina seems to be delusional, even crazy at times. She loves her husband and her daughter Cece but for some reason, can’t stand Millie.

Andrew, Nina’s husband, is the perfect guy, too good to be true. He empathises with Millie’s plight but can he go against his own wife?

Someone has ended up dead in the prologue of the novel. Is it one of these three? Or was one of them the murderer? What happened in the Winchester household after the new maid was appointed?

The story comes to us in the first person perspective of two of the main characters.

Where the book worked for me:

😍 If you know your domestic thrillers, you'll know that the above character analysis will change over the course of the novel. The characters were unbelievable at times. In spite of this, I enjoyed their idiosyncrasies. A thriller can’t be twisty without characters who generate mixed feelings in you. It’s boring to have thrillers with clearly delineated good or bad characters. The characters in this book will test your loyalties towards them.

😍 The prologue is great. It created the right amount of suspense without revealing too much.

😍 The first person works well in this story. While there is a little rambling (one can't escape that entirely in first person povs, unfortunately), it reveals the thoughts and intentions of the characters well and also creates a nice mystery about the speaker of the prologue.

😍 I was impressed by how the author could take such a typical plotline and develop it into a captivating story. Right from the prologue till the end, I couldn’t keep the book aside. This, despite the fact that the story was disturbing, creepy, weird, even OTT.

😍 There are some interesting twists along the way. Though any regular thriller reader would be easily able to spot most of those, they were still penned in a way that I enjoyed them.

😍 I completed this 330+ pager within a day. I love books that surprise me with their pace.

😍 There is a dark humour underlying Millie’s narration, I liked those random funny moments even when the proceedings were not hilarious at all.

😍 The ending is excellent. While not completely unexpected (and also not completely realistic), it still offers the perfect finish to this plot.

😍 There was no alcoholic in this domestic thriller. Thank you for not using that trope, dear author. I am so fed up of reading thrillers with unreliable narrators who can’t control their addition to booze.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

😑 I couldn’t connect with the portrayal of Nina’s daughter, 9 year old Cece, who doesn’t behave her age. To portray her as creepy might help initially but it was an underutilised track ultimately.

😑 The blurb doesn’t do justice to the book and totally misrepresents it. It also contains minor spoilers. Thankfully, I read the blurb only after completing the book.

😑 As in every contemporary domestic thriller, there were some farfetched plot points that would NEVER occur in real life. A couple of these are left unexplained.

😑 There are also a few convenient coincidences. (Then again, these are found in almost every thriller, which is why I don’t read much of this genre.)

All in all, this was my first book by this author but I don’t think it will be my last. Despite the minor shortcomings, this book kept me largely satisfied. Since I am not an avid contemporary thriller reader, I cannot tell you if the plot is similar to any of the other recent domestic thrillers in the market. But I know that I was quite happy with it. Definitely recommended if you are looking for an entertaining commercial thriller.

My thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Housemaid”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Here's my review of the second book in this series, The Housemaid's Secret.