A review by nyquillll
The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

I’m sitting here, nodding my head, almost like a physical agreement with myself that I did enjoy this book. I finished it in a day and wow, wow.

There were a couple things I was able to guess correctly from the start:
that the prologue was in the POV of Nina, the wife; that Enzo would end up in a relationship with one of the women; and that Millie would somehow find herself locked in the room at some point
.

Things I enjoyed:
  • Freida does a great job, I think, of building out characters in a way that provokes an emotional reaction to them. In most of her stories, I’m able to get into her characters’ heads and really picture what they’re experiencing - which means I’m more invested in how things end. She also has a habit of gently leading you to believe one thing and then pulling back the curtain - et voila!!
  • I was trying like crazy to guess what would happen, and I think I got there a couple times from the heavy hints - but Freida also loves dropping red herrings that I fall for
  • The complexity of this story to document
    domestic abuse (to the extremes)
    and the toll it takes on the person who stays - how hard it is to escape 
  • I know it took halfway through the book for the plot to start plotting, but I think it felt genius, because when Part II hits, you begin to question everything you read and how you interpreted it, and I LOVE this feeling 
  • The ending. I do not condone
    murder
    at all, but the comeuppance felt like the story was fully completed. I’m super curious to see where the second books takes off from, now that we’ve been introduced to this new role Millie can play. I’m really glad Freida chose to have
    Nina protect Millie, even if she needed cajoling, because it’s true, Millie didn’t deserve to be set up for this just because she had a prison record
  • Just wow - at one point, I literally said
    “I think there’s a plot hole, they never mentioned where the daughter went, she disappeared”
    AND THEN I LEARNED
  • The reveal felt like everything. I had to close this book multiple times and just gasp because it felt like a long time coming, but then to finally see how it played out???? Couldn’t have predicted  the twist, even though everything felt like it made sense in the story world, especially the smaller reveals in the last few chapters 
  • THE PEANUT BUTTER

Things I didn’t enjoy as much:
  • Some of the writing around “foreigners” and accented English - although I think it was played up to reflect the stereotype of rich people being rude? But I was a bit sensitive to this
  • Again, comments about
    “I deliberately put on weight so I wouldn’t be sexually desirable”
  • How bratty CeCe was - and it was never really fully explained why she acted this way with people who weren’t her mother 

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and will definitely be reading the rest in the series! 
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