Book Review – The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

Where do I begin with Freida McFadden? She is so popular among female readers much in the way that Colleen Hoover is that when I read her books, I’m always disappointed at what I ended up reading. For point of reference, when I read Kristin Hannah, I’m always blown away by the emotional read. Freida McFadden doesn’t give me all the feels. She just gives me two. Disappointment and meh, what next?

I’ll admit that I saw the film first which is why I picked this up. The movie was watchable popcorn fluff. Not great, but its well acted and the husband is nice to look at so why not watch it, right? This was the second McFadden book I read (The Teacher was the first) so I expected this to be a twist fest. Maybe its because I watched the film first, but I found the twist to be an average amount of oh, okay shock just like the movie.

If you’ve not watched the movie, this follows a recently released from prison convict who takes a housemaid position out of desperation. The woman who hires her, Nina, seems to be at her wits end with keeping up on the house and raising her daughter and that craziness seems to be confirmed by other women in Nina’s circle. When the housemaid finally gets around to having that one night stand with the hot husband, Andrew, while Nina is out of town, Nina loses what is left of her control and Andrew kicks her out.

Ah, and then the twist. The entire scenario of hiring the housemaid to clean house and have the eventual affair with Andrew was all according to plan because Andrew is really a psychotic controlling abuser. He uses Nina’s daughter against her to control her and locks Nina in the attic as punishment for small infractions like forgetting to get her dark roots dyed at the right time. The housemaid, Millie, ends up taking her place after Nina leaves. But Millie is different. She was in prison for defending her friend against the man raping her, and he died which sent her to prison for manslaughter. Nina felt she could put Millie in the house with Andrew and she would know how to fight back. And she did, though the story was much more convincing in the movie than in the book.

I stated in my review of The Teacher that if McFadden wanted to, she could write stories that went far deeper than the ones she writes. I mean, she sells millions of books and that is amazing. She gets women reading, and that too is amazing. But there could be deeper meaning to these stories. Millie and Nina could both be the faces of women who have survived abuse. Andrew should be the warning women need with getting to know who you are with before you commit. And while I believe that those ideas on there hiding within the pages of this novel, they are only surface level. Underneath, salacious gossip and the need to have a twist for the sake of having a twist. Unreliable narrators and fancy lifestyles most of us only dream of. Nothing that hasn’t been told before.

Colleen Hoover tries to do this too, but she just ends up preaching. When I read It Ends With Us, I couldn’t believe how many women were reading it and thinking it was great. She wrote a novel about abuse that both romanticises abuse and preaches about how “bad” it is, but never has much to say beyond that which is sad since she took it from real life experience. That is my experience with Freida McFadden twice now. Here’s this predatory, abusive man who gets away with a lot because society has trained us to believe what he says about his “crazy” wife. And instead of making a statement about it, McFadden gives us an affair with the maid who has anger issues and just does to the abuser what was done to her. And then she goes on to the next book to help another trapped, abused wife who apparently can’t help herself. Sure, Freida. Milk the franchise.

I know I’m bashing a lot here, but I think McFadden is a decent writer even if she dumbs down the diction a bit for the masses. She gives twists, some surprising and some not, in-between the sex she doesn’t really describe in detail. Props for that, by the way, Freida. I have nothing against graphic sex in books (I’ve been obsessed with the Fourth Wing books just as much as the next girl), but sometimes the story needs to flow without it. They had hot affair sex in a nice hotel after she wore a sexy dress. Enough said. Next plot point.

3 out of 5 stars. I think the movie ruined the plot for me on this one.