I started and finished this the same weekend I read The Housemaid. After the first book I wasn’t sure how the story was going to continue and I was a bit worried it would be samey. In some respects there are definite echoes of the main storyline from The Housemaid however it was different enough to make this back to back reading enjoyable.

The story continues with Millie living in a run down apartment in a run down area in New York. Millie has a new boyfriend with whom she’s yet to share her past and she’s moved on from her job helping women. Or has she?

Like The Housemaid, this story is also told in parts almost like an after then before. The story started to go in what I thought was an obvious way and then again an unexpected twist.

I think if you’ve enjoyed these you’ll enjoy A R Torre’s thrillers. My next thriller/suspense read will be The Woman in Cabin 10 from Ruth Ware. Have you read it?

Absolutely amazing! Freida McFadden has done it again and this sequel was as awesome as I expected after reading the first book.

Millie is back however she is now turning over a new leaf and training to be a social worker. This means she can continue to help women who are experiencing domestic violence but do it safely within the confines of the law. When Millie’s current employer decides to let her go, once again, Millie is desperate for a job and she can’t believe her luck when she is contacted by Douglas Garrick, a wealthy tech genius who needs a general housekeeper for himself and his wife Wendy. With Millie in financial dire straits, she immediately accepts the job offer but almost as soon as she starts the job, things seem strange; she is not told to go into Mrs Garricks bedroom, in fact she is not to even talk to Wendy Garrick, Millie finds blood on a nightdress she needs to launder and often hears raised voices, crashing and crying from the room. Despite all this Millie is reluctant to jump to assumptions however when she finds a bloody handprint and a blood trail leading to Mrs Garrick’s bedroom, she knows she now has no choice but to intervene and when she manages to get Mrs Garrick to open her bedroom door, she is horrified by what she sees. Millie is thrown, once again, back into helping a fragile woman escape her abusive husband.

Wowsers I was so excited to read this, and it was as fantastic as I have come to expect from Freida McFadden, I was just as addicted to this book as I was the first and quickly devoured it. The author has a cracking sense of humour and although it was a little unusual to have humour in a thriller, for example Brock being called Broccoli, it really worked, cut the tension, and made me laugh out loud. I would say that the baddie from first book definitely deserves the baddie from this book, two very ugly and nasty individuals, great characters that Frieda McFadden writes so well. The end twist was MAGNIFICANT, and it was the first time ever, when reading any thriller, that I have gasped out loud “noooooo?” (so loudly in fact my husband asked what was happening!)

Overall, this was brilliant and wholly deserves 5 stars. I always tend to worry about sequels, but this equalled The Housemaid with no doubt. Twisted but great and I highly recommend it for psychological thriller fans, you will not be disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley, Freida McFadden and Bookouture for my advanced reading copy. Out on the 20th February 2023.

Oh my! I loved this. I enjoyed the characters (so wicked), the unexpected and convoluted twists the tale took, and, of course, Enzo, because I'm a sucker for rugged Italian men.

I loved Millie, shes real, down-to-earth, and badass enough to take the edge off her miss-staying-out-of-trouble act.

A sparkling 4 stars.

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for my review copy ♡

I really enjoyed this sequel to The Housemaid. The book appears to be a simple story, but there are many layers that make it more complex and twisted. It was easy to get hooked and was a fast read. I would love to share which characters I liked and didn’t like and which twists I found surprising and which ones I figured out. However, that would give things away and you should read this book and enjoy it for yourself. So - no spoilers here!

Thank you to #NetGalley and #Bookouture for an eARC of #TheHousemaid’sSecret by #FreidaMcFadden - 4 stars

I seriously believe Freida McFadden is a robot. I do not understand how a human would be able to write as many books as she has AND they ALL are absolutely AMAZING! I feel I am pretty good at "figuring it out" BUT not with Ms. McFadden. She is amazing. This title did not disappoint!

10 stars out of 5!

Another book I couldn’t put down by my queen Freida! I love everything she writes, this was another 5 star read. I highly recommend reading the first book before this one. I cannot wait to read more from her Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

The Housemaid's Secret is another page turner that keeps you reading well into the night.

Millie is back and finally landed herself a job with Douglas Garrick and she is instructed never to open the door to his wife's room as she is very ill.

Well we all know Millie and Millie will champion anyone she feels is being threatened.

Is Douglas's wife at jeopardy.

I don't want to give anything away: its a journey that you will love to follow with twists and turns that will have you cringing for Millie and at the same time cheering her on.

I love this series and cant wait for the next adventure of Millie.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for a read I wont soon forget.

I loved everything about this book! I don't know how this author continues to find twists and turns that are so unpredictable. I'm hoping to one day see these stories as a series or a movie!

The Housemaid's Secret by Freida McFadden is the second book featuring Millie. The plot was similar to the first book but still felt fresh. Millie’s need to help women in need is admirable, if not a little pathological. Millie goes to work for Garrick’s. The story is told from Millie’s POV and from Wendy Garrick’s POV. I really enjoy the characters’ progression throughout the book. This is a twisty, dark, and delicious book. Highly recommend.

***** I received an ARC from NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my honest review. *****

There is something highly bingeable about Freida McFadden’s addictive writing. Ive read both books in The Housemaid series now and I couldn’t put either book down!! It’s so fast-paced, knee-jerking, and intensely suspenseful, that you just have to keep on reading.

However, where FM excels at creating plot twists and epic storylines, she flounders at creating complex, relatable characters. I’m so thrown off by how naive and shallow everyone seems to be! There are certain times I want to shake the characters and tell them to wake up or grow up! Especially Millie. For someone who was in a similar situation prior, she shouldn’t be so easily fooled (again!)

Pick this book up if you’re in the mood for great suspense, without becoming attached to the characters.

4.5 ⭐️ rounded to a 5!

I absolutely adored Millie’s first book - The Housemaid - and to fully understand and enjoy book 2 you need to read the first one FIRST. Millie has a reputation for helping women and children escape the very abusive / negative environments of powerful men… in various ways - some very much legal, some… not so much.

While I did enjoy this twist on the initial story, the first half of this book felt a little dull for me! I wanted more build/anticipation as you worked to find out what was going on.

I felt like Brock or Broccoli 😂 was an annoying side character and didn’t bring all that much value to the book. I felt that i could have used less of him and more build between Doug & Wendy and their relationship to Millie.

Once Millie finally started blowing off Brock and spending more time helping Wendy, the book took of for me, and i ate up every second.

As always Freida has an impeccable way of blowing up your mind in the last 20-30 pages of the book, and i was mind blown, jaw open the entire last 20% of the book!

I love that there is a small open ended potential for Millie to have a third book and 🤞🏻 Freida keeps writing Millie & Enzo’s story!

The Housemaid’s Secret, by Freida McFadden, is an entertaining whodunit, #2 in the series featuring Millie Calloway, a housemaid in New York City. It is easily read as a standalone, although I recommend reading the first book, The Housemaid, for its engaging storyline and the back story on Millie’s escapades.
In this book, Millie is a bit older and wiser, and now has a criminal record, so finding a good job is tricky. When wealthy Douglas Garrick hires her, she is grateful even though he is incredibly picky and has a mysterious chronically ill wife who never leaves her rooms in the apartment.
No spoilers here, the action picks up as Millie becomes curious and concerned about the wife, deals with a stalker in a black Mazda, and undergoes police scrutiny for her efforts to help the wife.
This story is told from two POVs, Millie’s and the wife Wendy’s, thus the reader is treated to a well-rounded picture, the how, when and why, of the mystery. Millie is very likeable and continues to be driven to assist women victims of domestic abuse. The secondary characters are a bit more two-dimensional, but consistent and well-involved in the plot.
McFadden’s writing is top-notch! She gets the pace of the story just right, fully engages the reader as the plot unspools, and in a fun writing device, leaves a short teaser at the end of each chapter, prompting the reader to wonder “what’s next” each time! There are excellent, and surprising, twists near the end that made this a very satisfying mystery read!

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

Millie is back, now in a steady relationship with Brock and has put what happened with the Winchesters behind her, she has just landed herself a job working for The Garricks in their swanky penthouse apartment. While Douglas Garrick is showing her round he tells her that his wife Wendy is very ill and shouldn't be disturbed in the guest bedroom where she sleeps. With Millie's past she wonders whether there's more to it, but accepts it until she hears crying through the door one day, then sees bloodstains on Wendy's nightgown when she's doing the laundry and knows she has to knock the door. What she sees makes her determined to help Wendy and make Douglas pay for what he's done.

The Housemaids Secret is the second book in the series, having bought the first book back in 2022, and this one now available, I decided to read them in order and actually read them back to back while the first one was still fresh in my mind. It was lovely to catch up with Millie again and see her getting on with her life, settled and happy, but things are never that straightforward are they? This second book has a similar theme to the first in the layout of the story, told from a dual perspective, this time being Millie and Wendy. It is equally as dark as the first with just as many unexpected twists and, as with the first, I raced through it and found it to be a really enjoyable read. It can be read as a standalone but to understand the background of Millie I recommend reading this series in order.

I'd like to thank Bookouture and Netgalley for the auto approval, I will post my review on Goodreads now and Amazon on publication day.

I have seen a lot of strange things in my years cleaning houses. A lot of bad things too. For a while, I used to try to fix some of those bad things. But I haven’t done that in a long time.

4.5 ⭐

I liked it! And I was scared I wouldn't because I loved the first book so much, my expectations were set pretty high. But this one was also fun and exciting, with cool twists and clues that made me unable to put the book down.

The Housemaid’s Secret follows Millie once again, as she is trying to get a job to help her get through college. But surprise, surprise - there's something off with the family she started working for.

I'm not going to say much more, I’ll let you find out for yourselves everything she gets through. But in case you're still wondering if you should pick up this book, it definitely has my recommendations. It was one of the better thrillers I’ve read recently and I enjoyed it a lot.

If you want to see my much more in depth review, you can check it out on my book blog NovelOnMyMind.

Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of The Housemaid's Secret by Freida McFadden in exchange for an honest review.

4 stars! Frieda’s writing always has a way of making me stop what I’m doing and binge read. The Housemaid’s Secret was no exception. I pulled an all nighter devouring this sequel and it definitely was worth my while.

If I had to pick out one flaw, it’s that Millie’s character still seems a bit naive. She set herself up several times over again to either be attacked or accused of a crime simply because she didn’t ask enough questions of those around her.

That being said, the twists and turns were extremely well written. Just when I thought I knew where Frieda was going with the story, the opposite would happen. I loved the plot and can’t wait to see if there’s a book 3 in this series!

Another wonderfully twisty read from Freida McFadden! If you think you know what to expect after reading The Housemaid, you’re wrong. Freida McFadden continues the story of Millie, and it’s a thrilling ride of twists and turns that will keep you glued until you know how it ends! Clear your calendar and tuck in - you won’t regret it!

Millie is BACK! I enjoyed this book and it was a fast read. That said, I liked the original better. This one was easily predictable, but I was still shocked at the last twist. Everything a good thriller should have!

Rating: 4 star
Genre: Thriller

Thoughts: At first I was worried that this book was going to be a repeat of the first Housemaid book, I was wrong! This book sucked me in right away. I reached the halfway point thinking I had it all figured and boy, was I wrong about that too! I loved all the twists and turns, hidden clues, it kept me hooked the whole way through.

The Housemaids Secret by Freida McFadden is a well written suspenseful novel that I really enjoyed.

The characters are well written and fleshed out.

There were multiple twists that kept me guessing.

Another great read by this author .

Another great read from Freida McFadden.
I read the Housemaid fairly recently and absolutely loved it, so I’ve been looking forward to this one.
We join Millie just as she’s about to lose a job and learn that she’s now studying as well as working.
She soon finds another job working for the Garricks. They live in the penthouse and Millie is in awe of the apartment.
Douglas Garrick tells Millie that his wife suffers from ill health and she’s not to disturb her in her room. This is fine until Millie hears her crying and wants to check she is ok.
Things take a turn for the worse and soon one of them has blood on their hands.
This is a gripping psychological thriller that is split into different parts so we see things from different perspectives.
I love Millie and hope there’s more books in this series.
Thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.