If you’ve been anywhere near BookTok in the last three years, you’ve seen The Housemaid. Freida McFadden’s 2022 thriller became the kind of book people pass around with “just trust me,” and the film adaptation (with Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried) pulled a whole new crowd in. So: does it hold up for people who read a lot of thrillers? Let’s unravel it.
The setup (spoiler-free)
Millie is fresh out of prison, sleeping in her car, and desperate. She lands a live-in housekeeping job with the Winchesters, a rich family in a gorgeous house. Nina, the wife, is… a lot. Charming one minute, cruel the next, and weirdly obsessed with keeping Millie in the tiny attic room with a lock on the outside of the door.
Andrew, the husband, is kind. Too kind? You’ll spend half the book trying to decide.
That’s all you need. Honestly, the less you know going in, the better.
What works
- Pace. The chapters are short and end on hooks. I finished it in one evening without meaning to.
- The flip. Around the midpoint, the book changes whose eyes you’re looking through, and everything you assumed gets rearranged. It’s the reason the book went viral.
- Millie’s voice. She’s prickly, funny, and not a reliable narrator in the way you expect.
What doesn’t
- The prose is plain. McFadden writes for speed, not beauty. If you loved the slow dread of Wild Dark Shore, this will feel thin.
- The last act leans on a lot of convenient timing.
- Experienced thriller readers will guess one of the twists. Probably not both.
Our take
It’s a popcorn thriller, and a very good one. Not life-changing like The Silent Patient, but it does exactly what it promises: it keeps you turning pages and it makes you text a friend halfway through. Four out of five locked attic doors.
Spoiler section (seriously, stop here if you haven’t read it)
The big reversal, that Nina is the trapped one and Andrew is the monster, lands because McFadden spends the whole first half making you dislike Nina. Reading it again, every “crazy” thing Nina does is a warning to Millie that she can’t say out loud. That’s clever.
What I keep thinking about is the ending. Millie locking Andrew in the attic and leaving him there isn’t justice, it’s revenge, and the book is fine with that. Whether you are is kind of the point.
Read it or watch it?
Read first. The film is fun, but the book’s trick depends on being inside Millie’s head.
Did you see the twist coming? Be honest in the comments. I didn’t, and I’m still annoyed about it.
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