From Behind Closed Doors, She Sees Everything

I recently finished reading The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. This is book #1 in The Housemaid series. I read this during my 24-hour readathon. This book is also my book club's September book.

*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT* Rating: 3.25/5 stars

"“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…"

Crazy is as crazy does......

The Housemaid is one of those illogical reads that just keeps your sticky fingers gripped to the pages. You want to shake it loose, but you simply can't. It is so bizarre that you keep checking if you are really reading it.

Millie comes up short where luck is concerned. She's always been at the wrong place and at the wrong time pretty much all of her life. Millie's been living in her cramped little car for some time now. Her last job didn't pan out and she's counting the slices of her cheap bread and bologna. She can't even get a job flippin' burgers. No good references. No good options.

But then an ad has been posted for a live-in maid with light duties. Millie interviews with the elegant wife/mother in her elegant house with her elegant handsome husband. Against all odds, Millie gets the job. But Nina, her new boss, is a bit "off". Nina has spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. She spins on a dime from day to day. Cecelia, nine years old, is spoiled rotten and lights up Millie every chance she gets. Millie feels sorry for Andrew, the husband, who is caught in this emotional blender at high speed.

Freida McFadden presents a whirlwind of events here. The pace and the short chapters keep this one afloat. The storyline has a familiar ring to it as those of us who've read a billion psychological thrillers know. Foolish people get fooled. Street-wise never do. But you press on just to experience the final outcome. And when it comes.....it comes. Not a blockbuster read by any means.

I’m hoping that I’m confused and missed the plot twist- because I read this book at the butt crack of dawn during the readathon (at this point I had been awake for close to 28 hours) because if the plot twist is what I think it was, I figured it out 50% into the book. This book is marketed as a mind-blowing plot twist but it literally was not. Heck, lifetime movies could be marketed as "mind-blowing plot twists" if we are going off of this book's plot twist standards.

Check out The Housemaid, and decide if the "plot twist" is noteworthy, or just another thriller that misses the bar. Don't forget to check out book #2 The Housemaid's Secret.

Happy Reading :)