REVIEW: The Housemaid

By Denise @ Life With No Plot on September 19, 2026 • ( 0 )

About the Book

Title: The Housemaid

Author: Freida McFadden

Series: The Housemaid #1

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

Pages: 338

Edition Read: Paperback

Dates Read: June 19 – 20, 2026

Challenge: GoodReads Spring Challenge 2026, Summer Reading

Blurb: Every day I clean the Winchesters’ beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.

I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.

I only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds out… and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.

But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.

They don’t know what I’m capable of…

Review

Freida McFadden is one of those authors that I’ve heard about all over the blogosphere and social media but never got around to reading. She writes mostly mysteries and thrillers, which is probably why I missed her – I used to read pretty much exclusively fantasy and YA. I picked this one up because of the GoodReads challenge. The prompt was to pick a book from a list of recent or upcoming adaptations, whether movies or television shows. I had seen this movie coming up and didn’t realize it was based on a book. When I found a copy of said book at Book Warehouse a few weeks back, it seemed meant to be.

When I say that I was blown away . . . I was blown AWAY!! I read the first third of this book in one sitting, and then the entire rest of the book the next day. I could not put it down. I had to know what happened next. And the plot twist? Blew my mind completely.

Millie is an interesting character. You automatically feel sympathy for her from the very beginning – she’s had a rough life that includes going to prison and now living out of her car. The reason she went to prison isn’t immediately revealed, and I won’t say it here, but let’s just say it ends up being very relevant to the story later on. She is desperate for a new start and the job at the Winchesters seems too good to be true . . . which, yes, it is. You find that out pretty quickly. There is so much I want to say about Nina’s character but I can’t really go into details without spoiling things. Let’s just say that she seems unhinged, and she definitely is, but she’s also extremely calculating and does nothing without a reason. Her story will chill you to the bone once everything is revealed.

There’s actually so much I want to say about everything, but it really is best to go into this book completely unprepared. The plot twist comes fairly early as these sorts of stories go. It is absolutely brutal and I did not see it coming AT ALL. I think for the sake of not spoiling things, I’m going to leave the review here. This is the first book in a series, and the next book was set up a bit in the final chapter, but to me, this was pretty standalone. There was closure to the events of the book, with an opening for other events to happen later, if that makes sense. I will most likely check out the next books sometime in the future when I free up some time in my reading schedule.

GoodReads rating: 5 stars