The Housemaid

The book starts off with a cold open. We go into the story knowing that there’s going to be a corpse. The big question is whose? We then jump three months back in time and get to meet Millie – one of our protagonists. She’s having an interview with Nina Winchester for a job as their maid.

Nina seems to be the perfect woman in almost every possible way: immaculate white clothing, flawless make-up, perfect manners and a house so perfectly clean that even Millie wonders what the hell they’ll need a maid for. The only thing that seems odd is the eerie attic that’ll be Millie’s room. If that setup in itself doesn’t scream “red flag” at us readers, then meeting Nina’s creepy daughter Cecelia – who Millie describes as the perfect MC for a horror movie – will for sure do the trick.  And if that still isn’t enough to convince us that the job seems too good to be true then let’s make the holy trinity complete and welcome Enzo, the landscaper, who subtly warns Millie not to take the job.

So, obviously we know that working for the Winchesters might not be the best idea, but alas we are not Millie, who just so happens to be out of prison (though we don’t know what for), on parole and sleeping in her car. Needless to say, she takes the job.

Turning up for her first day of work, Millie is surprised to see that the spotless house is now a huge mess. (Obviously we’re now allowed to say, ‘I knew it!’ to our books. We’re good at spotting red flags and can pride ourselves on that). We also get to know Cecelia a little better. I’m not gonna lie – I instantly hated her. Creepy appearance aside, her attitude just makes you want to scream at her to shut the hell up. Honestly, what is it with spoiled children? I’ll never get it.

Anyway. Cecelia proceeds to make a scene when Millie offers her a cracker with peanut butter and loudly accuses Millie of trying to kill her. I mean, sure allergies suck, and we all know they can end up deadly, but dear Ceceilia: fucking relax. Millie has known you for like two seconds. It would have done to just tell her about the allergy. This child. Well, you see where I’m going.

But let’s jump to the next day. Millie just got downstairs and is met with a kitchen that looks like a thunderstorm has gone through it, and a batshit-crazy Nina who instantly starts yelling at Millie. She can only be calmed down by her husband Andrew who apologizes to Millie on behalf of Nina. While I haven’t said it yet, I will now inform you that Andrew just so happens to be very hot. Because obviously this story needs more complications and a maid attracted to her crazy boss’s husband seems to do the trick.

We don’t need to go into detail for the next chapters. They are there to show us that Nina has psychological issues and different personalities by the hour and treats Millie like shit. Millie is just staying because she needs the job.

I’d like to insert that in chapter 16 Nina’s ‘friends’ – aka the other rich and spoiled women – really tested my patience. Those kinds of groups always make me rage and curse. Stupid rich people, who think they are above everyone else. Kindly fuck off. – Sorry it’s gotten the better of me. You might see I really, really, really don’t like spoiled people who think they are better than others, no matter their age.

But back to the story.  Millie feels like she could use some release and decides to try her luck in flirting with Enzo, the (obviously) hot landscaper. At this point in the book, I was glad to report that Millie and I have at least one thing in common: zero flirting skills. Long story short: Enzo rejects her and Millie is left to drool after Andrew.

Meanwhile Andrew and Nina go through a rough patch. Andrew wants more children (though btw, creepy Cece isn’t his biological child). He and Nina see a fertility doctor who tells them that Nina won’t be able to carry another child. Thus follows a loud fight between the couple in the middle of the night that leaves a tense atmosphere.

Andrew tries to make things up by asking Millie to get tickets to a Broadway show for him and Nina. And though Millie checked in with Nina to make sure that the date was correct, by the time the show comes around Nina once again goes nuts and says she gave Millie a different date. Anyhow Nina can’t go to the show ‘cause she’s taking Cecelia to summer camp. So of course, Andrew ends up going with Millie. And (you may act surprised now) the two of them end up sleeping with each other.

At this point I’ll shorten things up: Nina finds out but Andrew ends up kicking Nina to the curb and asks Millie to stay. Millie and Andrew proceed to sleep with each other, and all seems great – well, except for when Millie finds that Andrew – after having slept with her – locked her up in the attic.

And here comes our plot twist.

We switch to Nina’s POV and we see that Andrew is a huge fucking piece of shit who gets off on locking Nina in the attic and torturing her. He even tried to kill Ceceilia and made everyone believe that it was Nina and that she’s crazy – though actually she is not and in fact a victim.

I’ll be honest: that twist didn’t come as a surprise to me. To have Nina be the villain felt too obvious, I seriously doubted that Frieda McFadden would pull an Agatha Christie and make the child (Cece) be the villain. And since Enzo didn’t appear all too often that basically just left Andrew. And let’s be honest we could have guessed that he’s a bit cray cray after he slept with Millie and put on his boxers for the like five-meter walk to the shower. What psychopath does that? Just go straight to the shower dude. But I’m getting off topic.

By Nina’s POV the story started to strongly resemble ‘Behind Closed Doors’ by B.A. Paris. I’m not gonna go into detail as to not spoil you. But if you liked ‘The Housemaid’ I highly recommend this book to you. And maybe you’ll end up like me thinking that maybe this was the inspiration for Freida McFadden.

Nina’s POV shows us how Andrew abused her for years on end and how no one believed her – except for Enzo. Turns out Nina confided in him and he offered to help get her and Cecelia out.  They make up a plan, but Andrew is one step ahead and figures it out. Though he thinks that Nina planned it on her own. So, Nina desperate to escape her husband and the attic, comes up with a new plan to escape by finding a replacement – Millie.

It is now revealed that it was Nina’s plan all along to have Millie and Andrew be attracted to each other. This way Andrew might get bored of her and will see Millie as a new play toy. But Nina didn’t just want Millie to replace her. She hired Millie, because she hoped Millie would kill him.

Remember how, in the beginning, it was mentioned that Millie just came out of prison? Well, she was convicted for murder and has a history of ‘losing her temper’ with men.

The POVs now start to switch. We get to see Millie realize that Andrew is out of his mind and how Andrew comes up with a way to torture her whilst locked in the attic. Meanwhile Nina – fueled by Enzo – starts to feel guilty and questions if this was the right decision, and whether Millie will really kill him. Millie, however, manages to trick Andrew and lock him in the attic instead. I won’t go into details here, but Millie starts torturing and eventually killing Andrew.

Nina – ridden by a guilty conscience – drives back to the house, to help Millie escape. But she ends up finding Andrew’s corpse and a crying Millie who fears she’ll go back to prison. But Nina offers to take the blame and tells Millie to go.

We are now back at the beginning of the story with the police in the house. And we get to meet the true hero of this story: Officer Connors. Though it’s very clear that Andrew was tortured and didn’t just die from dehydration, Connors manages to sweep it under the rug. Why, you may ask yourself. Turns out Connors’ daughter was Andrew’s former fiancée and Connors has an idea of what Nina’s been through.

We then skip to the funeral and find out that – to absolutely no one’s surprise – Andrew’s mother used to torture him too. (I mean – come on – all of us thriller fans have probably been in true crime rabbit holes. We know that the childhood of abusers usually sucked). Anyhow, that leaves me to wonder what Evelyn (Andrew’s mom) must have done to Cecelia since she used to babysit her. Might explain why she turned out how she turned out (well except for Andrew’s obvious part on the matter). I guess in that case we can excuse her being spoiled.

Anyhow. The story ends with Millie applying for a new job as a maid – recommended by Nina. Or rather to help another abused woman escape her husband.

Though the plot twist of the story didn’t really twist for me, I really liked this book. It was easy to read and had just the right mix of tension and humor. I’m a little bit of a chicken so I feel like psychological thrillers have just the right amount of antsy and haunting for me. Plus, I’m always a fan of thrillers with short chapters and changing POV’s – especially once a twist has been revealed. It makes it easy to binge the book and get lost in the story. The characters were well thought through and all flawed, which made the reading even more fun. And even if I felt like Frieda McFadden might be a little copycat, I still enjoyed every second of it.  So overall, a good page-turning thriller.