Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Millie is broke, homeless, friendless, and in desperate need for any kind of job, even if it means being a housemaid for a bored, bitchy, irrational housewife. As least she won’t have to live in her car. But when Nina Winchester offers her the housemaid job and shows her the attic that would serve as her bedroom, Millie instantly feels something is off. However, with no other prospects, Millie will just have to deal with whatever shit life throws at her. And shit definitely gets crazy.
“If I leave this house, it will be in handcuffs. I should have run for it while I had the chance. Now my shot is gone.”
The Housemaid begins with a tense prologue featuring an unnamed narrator being briefly questioned by the police, already convinced that handcuffs are inevitable. The scene makes it clear that a violent crime has taken place, though the victim and the perpetrator remain a mystery. The narrative then jumps back three months earlier, to the moment Millie first meets Nina Winchester for the housemaid job.
Author Freida McFadden wastes no time is establishing something is shady about both women protagonists. Within the first few pages, viewers learn Millie is hiding something sinister about her past, while Nina Winchester seems to have her own share of dark secrets. Nina also suffers from erratic mood swings which makes both Millie and the reader wonder if she is clinically unwell. So safe to say, both women in this twisted thriller aren’t ideal figures.
The novel’s central tension unfolds through Millie’s unsettling tenure as the Winchesters’ housemaid. Her days are dominated by the erratic Nina and Nina’s insufferably spoiled daughter, Cece. Millie finds comfort in the paycheck, the prospect of saving for a new beginning, and the quiet allure of the handsome Andrew Winchester. But the longer she remains in the house, the more convinced she becomes that something about Nina is profoundly wrong, an unsettling realization that blurs the lines between suspicion and Millie’s growing attraction toward the older, charismatic Andrew. Yet pursuing that attraction could provoke Nina’s fury, a risk Millie isn’t sure she can afford to take.
Of course, the possibility of an affair between the young, attractive housemaid and the handsome master of the house is as cliché as thrillers come. But Freida McFadden layers the premise with twists about power, privilege, manipulation, and class divide, turning a basic ‘evil employer versus oppressed employee’ setup into a tense game of crime, strategy, and passion.
The last chapter finally reveals the details of the violent crime which made the unknown narrator think they would be leaving in handcuffs. All the grisly details are laid bare, the perpetrator of a murder is unmasked, and even though the reader knows somebody dies at the end, the events leading to the climax are quite unexpected.
Except for a few convenient plot holes (like how come there aren’t any CCTV cameras around a super posh locality to corroborate who was around the crime scene on a give day OR how come nobody bothers to check the victim’s phone for any evidence… OR a bunch of other things) ‘The Housemaid’ is an easy to read, bingeworthy thriller with some wicked twists. It took me only two days to read the novel, and given how I have been reading some other titles for weeks now, full praise to the author for keeping things entertaining.
The final stretch could have leaned a bit further into the madness, and a few characters might have benefited from deeper development. But adding more might also have slowed the pace. In its current form, The Housemaid moves quickly and delivers exactly what it promises – an entertainingly readable weekend thriller.
Rating: 4 on 5 stars. The Housemaid is on Kindle Unlimited.
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