Book Review: The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
March 6, 2026
This review is coming to you late because it was a hard one to digest. I was wanting a really twisty and turny book with a lot of intrigue, and while I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, nothing really felt like a shock, if you know what I mean.
In the first half of the book we follow the story of a young woman named Millie who is down on her luck. She just recently got out of prison after having served ten years of her fifteen year sentence and getting out on good behavior. Because of her record, it is terribly hard to find a job, and honestly keep one, so when she gets a response about being a house keeper for a very beautiful, fenced in home, she has to pinch herself. A week after her interview with the woman of the house, Nina, she receives a call asking her when she can start and if she would be willing to live in the house. Being that she was surviving off sandwiches and sleeping in her back seat, she jumps at the opportunity. Upon arrival, Millie is shown to her room - an attic space that she is fairly certain has scratches on the back of the door, and is 100% certain locks from the outside. It gives her the creeps but who is she to deny a room to stretch out in, when she had been sleeping in her back seat? From the moment Millie arrives, Nina starts acting a little strange, which unfolds into full on crazy. What is her deal? What is this family hiding? Why is the little girl so creepy? And why is the devastatingly handsome Andrew staying with the crazy Nina, even if they are in love?
The second half of the book we follow Nina’s side of the story, and in case you want to read this book for yourself, I am not going to tell you anything about this half other than the fact that we learn how she meets Andrew shortly after having her daughter Celia and how he was her knight in shining armor to save her from the life she was living. Or was he? Was this all too good to be true or did this incredibly sexy, thoughtful, and wealthy man really want to be with a postpartum single mom?
This one was hard to read as a new mom. I read it right around the time I read His & Hers and both of them touch on a mother daughter relationship in infant hood that was hard for me to read. That being said, I do think this is an interesting read and I think I would suggest it, just maybe not as a new mom. My body wouldn’t let me sleep one night because it was afraid my baby would be taken from me. I hope the movie coming out is just as good as the book.
