This is the first book I’ve read by Frieda McFadden, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a tense, twisty domestic thriller with dual points of view that ramps up the tension throughout. The characters are not necessarily likeable, but they are well developed and perfect for the story. All fans of domestic thrillers will love this book.

“Welcome to the family,” Nina Winchester said as she greeted Millie, her new housekeeper. Millie desperately needs a new job. She doesn't have too many choices and one that provides her with a place to live, sounds like heaven as she has been sleeping in her car.

Every day she cleans the home - it's gleaming and spotless. That is until Nina comes down and makes a mess and makes Millie clean it up again. Millie can't help but wonder why. Then there is the groundskeeper who warns her of danger when she first arrives. But Millie shakes it off. She can deal with one spoiled housewife. Her spoiled daughter is another issue, but Millie tries to win her over. Then there is Andrew - the achingly handsome husband who must put up with a demanding and erratic wife.

Millie tries her best, but will her best be good enough?

I had the luxury of having both the kindle and audiobook versions of the book. I enjoyed the narrator and being able to go back and forth between the book and listening to it in the car. I thought the narrator did a great job!

This was a fast-paced book which grabbed me from page one. I felt as if Nina was inviting me into her home and into her family. It was fun to be a fly on the wall, and watch the drama unfold. The characters in this book are an interesting bunch. Just who do you trust? Who is a reliable narrator? Who has secrets? How juicy and fun this book was! Pure entertainment.

I love trying to figure out what is going to happen, where the plot is going, who is telling the truth, who is reliable, etc. This one kept me on my toes. I found it to be fun, dramatic, surprising, and hard to put down!

Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Millie is looking for a fresh start after being in jail for the past 10 years. She starts a new job as a maid for a wealthy couple, Nina and Andrew, and she thinks this is her chance at a new life. As she tries to keep her head down and work, she discovers there’s more to her bosses than meets the eye.

I loved this book! It was fast paced with lots of twists to keep me hooked the whole way through. Millie and Nina were sometimes frustrating. Nina’s character gave me anxiety in the first part of the book but I couldn’t stop reading. The book does a 180 in the second half and it was such a clever way to keep you engaged as a reader. Loved the ending! I found it shocking but also so so satisfying!

I give this one a 5/5!

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Reading Between the Wines book review #31/135 for 2022:
Rating: 5 🍷 🍷 🍷 🍷 🍷
Book 🎧: The Housemaid
Author: Freida McFadden
Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Mystery & Thrillers
RELEASES TODAY, April 26, 2022! Get your copy!

Sipping thoughts: This is only my second book by McFadden and both, The Wife Upstairs and The Housemaid, were 5 stars for me. I absolutely love the way she writes. I feel like she has twists that you can see coming in a way but then there is a bit that you don’t see coming and then a big twist that comes behind that. The twist doesn’t seem overdone but just twisty enough and juicy. I don’t know where McFadden gets her narrators but this one, Lauryn Allman was so good. She was just as good as Angie Kane who read The Wife Upstairs. My advice to you is to get this book and read it as soon as you can before someone ruins it for you but also just because you should not go into the summer without adding this to your read shelf.

Cheers and thank you to @fizzziatrist, and @Bookouture for an advanced copy of @TheHousemaid.

#TheHousemaid #FreidaMcFadden #Bookouture #Netgalley #advancedreadercopy #ARC #Kindle #Booksofinstagram #readersofinstagram #bookstagram #nicoles_bookcellar #bookworm #bookdragon #booknerd #booklover #bookstagrammer #bookaholic #bookreview #bookreviewer #IHaveNoShelfControl #ReadingBetweenTheWines #fiction #thriller #suspense #mystery #MysteryAndThrillers #GeneralFictionAdult

Millie is hired to be a live-in worker for Nina and Andrew Winchester. When Millie goes to the house for her first day of work, she meets the Italian groundskeeper that says something in Italian word, “pericola” that Millie doesn’t understand. Once Millie goes upstairs to her tiny little attic room, she looks up the word and that word is “danger”. Another thing Millie notices about her attic room is that her door locks from the outside and not the inside. What has Millie gotten herself into? The couple is extremely wealthy but their house is literally a pig sty that Nina creates so that Millie can clean them.

Everyone living in the Winchester home has their own secrets, including Millie. With twists and turns you won’t see coming, this book will have you turning the pages to find out what’s going to happen next.

This is the first book I’ve read by Freida McFadden and I will definitely be reading her again.

Thank you to #netgalley and #bookouture for allowing me to read the eARC of this book. All opinions expressed above are my own.

This was one emotional roller coaster ride, full of twisty turns and a surprise ending. I was hooked the moment I started reading and bing read the book in one night. It has drama, a bit of steam and most important of all, is delightfully thrilling. My guessing game isnt strong but some of my hunches were close enough. However, the book did keep me on the edge of my seat.
The chapters were short and fast paced and the characters were interesting.
I am definitely reading more from the author.

The Housemaid is a thrill ride from beginning to end.

Millie gets a job as a live-in hired help. She works for Nina and Andrew in a grand house. As the help, she gets to live there also, but in the attic. As soon as she sees the attic she gets a funny feeling about it, but it's better than living in her car. Everyday she cleans, cooks, and collects their daughter from school or any other activity they can cram into her life. Nina appears to create messes on purpose just to make it harder on Millie. Nina also lies about pick up needs and schedules along with various other things. Millie tries to take it in stride but is doing a slow burn, she really doesn't want to lose the job. Andrew appears to struggle with Nina's ups and downs and Millie feels bad for him. As things escalate the gardener tells her there is danger and she should leave. This make her curious but not enough to leave. Nina's wealthy friends begin to talk about her in front of Millie and she starts to worry about Andrew and the daughter. But everything is not as it seems.

This story has several twists that will make you wonder who is the crazy person in the house. It is definitely a fast read that will keep you guessing until the very end.

In a Nutshell: A bit farfetched but it still provided me with almost everything I look for in a thriller.

Story:
Millie has just been hired as the housemaid to rich Nina Winchester.
Millie is hiding a secret from Nina in order to get the job as she is desperate. She decides to become the perfect housemaid so that she can earn her way out of her maniacal employer’s clutches.
Nina seems to be delusional, even crazy at times. She loves her husband and her daughter Cece but for some reason, can’t stand Millie.
Andrew, Nina’s husband, is the perfect guy, too good to be true. He empathises with Millie’s plight but can he go against his own wife?
Someone has ended up dead in the prologue of the novel. Is it one of these three? Or was one of them the murderer? What happened in the Winchester household after the new maid was appointed?
The story comes to us in the first person perspective of two of the main characters.

Where the book worked for me:
😍 If you know your domestic thrillers, you'll know that the above character analysis will change over the course of the novel. The characters were unbelievable at times. In spite of this, I enjoyed their idiosyncrasies. A thriller can’t be twisty without characters who generate mixed feelings in you. It’s boring to have thrillers with clearly delineated good or bad characters. The characters in this book will test your loyalties towards them.
😍 The prologue is great. It created the right amount of suspense without revealing too much.
😍 The first person works well in this story. While there is a little rambling (one can't escape that entirely in first person povs, unfortunately), it reveals the thoughts and intentions of the characters well and also creates a nice mystery about the speaker of the prologue.
😍 I was impressed by how the author could take such a typical plotline and develop it into a captivating story. Right from the prologue till the end, I couldn’t keep the book aside. This, despite the fact that the story was disturbing, creepy, weird, even OTT.
😍 There are some interesting twists along the way. Though any regular thriller reader would be easily able to spot most of those, they were still penned in a way that I enjoyed them.
😍 I completed this 330+ pager within a day. I love books that surprise me with their pace.
😍 There is a dark humour underlying Millie’s narration, I liked those random funny moments even when the proceedings were not hilarious at all.
😍 The ending is excellent. While not completely unexpected (and also not completely realistic), it still offers the perfect finish to this plot.
😍 There was no alcoholic in this domestic thriller. Thank you for not using that trope, dear author. I am so fed up of reading thrillers with unreliable narrators who can’t control their addition to booze.

Where the book could have worked better for me:
😑 I couldn’t connect with the portrayal of Nina’s daughter, 9 year old Cece, who doesn’t behave her age. To portray her as creepy might help initially but it was an underutilised track ultimately.
😑 The blurb doesn’t do justice to the book and totally misrepresents it. It also contains minor spoilers. Thankfully, I read the blurb only after completing the book.
😑 As in every contemporary domestic thriller, there were some farfetched plot points that would NEVER occur in real life. A couple of these are left unexplained.
😑 There are also a few convenient coincidences. (Then again, these are found in almost every thriller, which is why I don’t read much of this genre.)

All in all, this was my first book by this author but I don’t think it will be my last. Despite the minor shortcomings, this book kept me largely satisfied. Since I am not an avid contemporary thriller reader, I cannot tell you if the plot is similar to any of the other recent domestic thrillers in the market. But I know that I was quite happy with it. Definitely recommended if you are looking for an entertaining commercial thriller.

4.25 stars.

My thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Housemaid”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Review: The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The housemaid was a solid 5 star read for me, it was my first Freida McFadden book but will definitely not be my last.

The book is written from two main character perspectives, first from Millie, a young woman recently released from prison, desperate for a job who becomes “The Housemaid” and then Nina the wife, mother and strange personality that Millie works for.

The author has written this so cleverly that the story flips and everything you thought you knew gets turned on it’s head through many twists and turns. The only negative was that the ending felt a little rushed but that still didn’t take away from what a great book this is.

If you like a twisty psychological thriller then you can’t go wrong with this. If you enjoyed Verity by Colleen Hoover I think you will enjoy this.

Thanks NetGalley and Bookoture for the ARC.

First of all, how cool is this cover!?

This was another fast paced and twisty read from Freida McFadden! I was hooked from page one and had a hard time putting this book down because I was dying to know how it was going to end!

Freida McFadden quickly became an auto buy author for me and I can’t wait to see what she writes next!

Thanks to Netgalley, Bookouture and the author for the e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review!

Millie Calloway, fresh out of prison, lands a job as a live-in maid working for the well-off Winchester family, Nina, her husband Andrew and their daughter, Cecelia. Millie is glad she will no longer have to use her car as her home but it's not long before she realises that the Winchesters aren't all they appear to be...

I have read one of Freida McFadden's tales before (The Ex) so I figured that The Housemaid would be something special; it was! The author's character development is amazing and her straightforward writing style suits me. Exactly the right amount of suspense kept the story interesting so I felt that I needed to read just one more chapter. The curveballs and the unexpected ending are the icing on the cake. Very highly recommended.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel at my request from Bookouture via NetGalley, and this review is my own unbiased opinion.

I absolutely loved this crazy book. Seriously, the twists in this one completely took me by surprise! These kind of thrillers are my absolute favorite, Ones that keep you up so late because you gotta know what happens next!

Millie is looking for a fresh start after getting out of prison. She just got fired from her recent job, so she's living in her car. She applies for a Housemaid position at the Winchester residence. A beautiful huge house. Nina Winchester hires her. Once she starts here, Nina becomes so nasty….and seems to hate Millie right off the bat. But the reason Nina treats her this way is NOT what you'd think!! I do not want to say any more as I feel going in blind is best. That's what I did. But seriously, I thought this one was so suspenseful and awesome!!

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the gifted copy. All opinions are my own.

I binged read this book and all I can say is wow 🤯 Freida McFadden does it again with another page turning, unable to put down, plot twisting fantastic read! Highly recommended ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“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.” - Prologue.

My thanks to Bookouture for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Housemaid’ by Freida McFadden in exchange for an honest review.

Right from the above opening lines I was hooked.
This is one of those domestic noirs/psychological thrillers that I feel is best read ‘cold’, so just the barest of details.

After the Prologue we go back three months earlier.
The housemaid of the title is Millie, who has applied for the position of live-in housekeeper for the wealthy Nina and Andrew Winchester. Millie is on parole and really needs this job. No further details though as might be expected from this type of thriller and the Prologue’s teaser, things get quite complicated.

Most of the novel focuses upon the dynamic between these three adults, though there is also the Winchester’s spoiled nine-year-old daughter, Cecelia, to add to Millie’s torments. At her first meeting with ‘CeCe’ she thinks “I’d say there’s at least a twenty-five percent chance she’s going to murder me in my sleep if I get this job. But I still want it.”

Overall, one of the best, twisty, unputdownable psychological thrillers that I have read for a while. After such a positive experience, I plan to check out Freida McFadden’s earlier novels as well as look out for her future projects.

Millie is down on her luck and in need of a job. After spending some time in prison, she hopes to find something soon because sleeping in her car is getting old.

She interviews with Nina Winchester in her spectacular home for a position as live-in maid. In addition, she will be doing some childcare for Nina’s 9-year-old daughter, Cecelia. Nina is married to Andrew who is quite easy on the eyes.

Nina soon learns that Nina can go from very sweet to an evil witch in a matter of minutes so she’s on edge to try and keep the woman happy. Cecelia is a lot like her mother and a total brat. Ah, but Andrew is a true gentleman and always kind.

Nina lives in an attic room with a connecting bathroom. It’s small and cramped but it beats sleeping in her car.

Millie soon learns that Nina has had some serious mental problems in the past so she gears herself up to handle the woman's mood swings. When she sees Nina act up, she really feels sorry for the handsome Andrew. So, when Andrew throws Nina out of the house, Millie sees her chance to step in and replace her. What a wonderful thing, right?

There were a couple of times that I thought this plot was rather corny until I got further into the book. This story plays out to be really tense and unexpected. I liked the book and I hope others will as well.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Millie is an ex-convict who is just fired from her job and is living in her car. She tries her best to find a job, so when she is contacted by Nina to be a housemaid and nanny to her daughter she is thrilled and does not want to mess it up.

Millie comes across as an unreliable narrator as the first half of the book is told from her point of view. I liked being in Millie's head and found her inner monologue endearing. I initially disliked Nina but after the second half we get to know her point of view and reasons behind her actions.

I haven't read any book by Freida McFadden but I can see why she is such a popular thriller writer. I could not turn the pages fast enough.The twists kept coming and I thought I knew how this would end but no. She just threw another curveball with an unexpected ending.

This reminded me of What Lies Between us by John Marrs where everything is not as it seems. Overall a masterfully crafted thriller. Simply Brilliant!! I will be checking her previous books and looking out for any new releases by her.

Thank you @netgalley @bookoutoure for the eARC.

It's been a very long time since I was completely pulled into a novel and I loved every minute of it.

Millie needs a fresh start - she's got some baggage (she's a newly-released convict) and getting a job as a housekeeper is sort of her big chance at moving out of her car and actually having room and board. But as soon as she moves in with a wealthy family, things seem...off. Before she knows it, Millie is in the middle of some major weirdness. From an unbalanced wife and bratty child to a seemingly broken-hearted husband, Millie is going to have to figure out what's happening before it's too late.

This is a whirlwind of a story and you're going to love every minute of it!!

Read this if...you like thrillers that feature the gaslighting trope.

Having a criminal record makes finding a job difficult and Millie is desperate for work. She can’t believe her luck when she is offered the live-in housemaid position in a wealthy family’s home. The mistress of the house, Nina, is very demanding and especially cruel to Millie, constantly talking down to her and creating unnecessary jobs for her to do. There are rumors that Nina is mentally unwell. If Millie didn’t need this job so badly, she would have walked away the first day. Nina’s husband is also a constant victim of his wife’s unpredictable mood swings and Millie can’t help herself from falling for him. Of all the mistakes Millie has made, this one might turn out to be the deadliest.

I loved this thriller! I didn’t have high expectations because I’ve read so many books about maids that they all seem to blend together eventually. That wasn’t the case with this one though! The storyline completely surprised me and I did not see the twists coming. My only complaint was that the ending felt a little too rushed and was somewhat difficult to believe. It was still satisfying, but after getting so invested in the drama, I wanted it to last longer than it did. But overall, this was a fast-paced, twisty thriller that I enjoyed!

A big thanks to Netgalley, the author, and Bookouture for a digital ARC and an ALC in exchange for my honest review!

The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden, review

“If I leave this house, it will be in handcuffs,” is the bang-up lead-in to this twisty domestic thriller.

Told from the POVs of Nina—rich, spoiled housewife—and her new maid, Millie—homeless, just released from prison and badly in need of a job—the story builds slowly through the exaggerated dustups of employer and employee. Millie is beautiful, Nina is jealous, and Andrew, Nina’s wealthy husband is guileless and gorgeous. But all is not as it appears, everyone has secrets, there are revelations of past misdeeds, and Enzo the gardener is hovering on the sidelines with his ominous warnings to Millie.

The characters in this book are mostly unlikeable, for various reasons, but the writing is solid and the plot is immersive, imbued with a terrific “what happens next” vibe.

I recommend this novel to readers who like domestic suspense with multiple twists and a clever ending to top it off!

Thank you to Bookoutre and NetGalley for the ARC. This is my honest review.

4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Millie is an ex-con living out of her car and desperate for a new job. When the glamorous Nina Winchester offers her a position as live-in housemaid despite her past, Millie jumps at the opportunity. The pay is good, the house is beautiful, and the husband is hot, so when rumors start swirling about Nina’s mental health and things start to go sideways in the house, Millie puts up with it. But as things continue to spiral out of control, Millie realizes she could be in danger… then again, the Winchesters have no idea what *she* is capable of, do they?

I really enjoyed this book! From the funny/strange things that Nina does to Millie (like gifting her old clothes and then accusing her of stealing them) to the twist in the middle (that you might see coming) and the second little twist at the very end (!) this book is an entertaining, must-read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.