A few months ago, The Housemaid by Freida McFadden popped up on all Dutch social media platforms I’m using. The book was recently translated and it received glowing reviews. However, I wasn’t interested at first since I’m not the biggest fan of thrillers lately and especially not psychological thrillers. Somehow, it kept demanding my attention. Finally, I caved and bought myself a copy of the book which I read pretty soon. Did I find it as addictive as other people state it is?

• Title: The Housemaid
• Author: Freida McFadden
• Series: The Housemaid #1
• Publish date: August 23, 2022
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• ISBN: 9781538742570
• Number of pages: 325
• Genre: Thriller

“Welcome to the family,” Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I’ll soon learn that the Winchesters’ secrets are far more dangerous than my own…
 Every day I clean the Winchesters’ beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.
 I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.
 I only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds out… and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.
 But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.
 They don’t know what I’m capable of…

This story is centered around Millie who has applied for a housemaid’s job at the Winchester house. Nina, Andrew and their daughter are in desperate need of a maid. Everything seems fine at first, but soon strange things happen. Nina acts odd and Andrew seems to be a broken man. However, Millie has much darker secrets of her own, ones she hope will never find a way out…

As a reader, we don’t know Millie’s secrets either, but we have to find out eventually. We will, but that takes up a good chunk of the book. Also, Nina acting weird seemed to be resolved quite quickly, but nothing turns out the way they seem. However, I wasn’t connecting to any of the characters. Of course I wanted to know about Millie’s past and what was going on with the Winchester family, but overall I think my expectations of this thriller were too high. I just didn’t feel it.

The writing was good. The chapters are mostly short which makes it easy to turn just another page and read some more. However, they are meant to build up tension which I didn’t feel overall. It was not intriguing.

To be quite honest, the plot was not intriguing for most part. The book is devided into three parts: one centered around Millie, one around Nina and the final one alternates between Millie and Nina. The first part about Millie was outright boring. I couldn’t get into the book and actually doubted whether to DNF it. I’m glad I pushed through, because the second part was much better. It’s centered around Nina and there several twists make their way into the plot. They can be interesting and they somewhat are. However, the book lost me already. The third and final part was wrapped up way too quickly and therefore was not intriguing anymore. It felt to me that the story needed to be wrapped up and that the final part was thrown to do just that. This is the part where Millie’s past got revealed, but that was done quickly as well.

Unfortunately, I found the Housemaid by Freida McFadden not as addictive as the blurbs claims this thriller to be. The first part was really boring and dragging and the third part was qrapped up way to quickly. The second part was the most interesting, but to be fair this book already lost my interest. The writing style is easy and accessible though, with short chapters. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel any tension and urgency in this book. I’m not sure whether I will pick up the sequel, maybe once in a lifetime.