THE HOUSEMAID

By Frieda McFadden

If a situation seems too perfect to be true, news flash, it probably is.

The Ugly Truth:

How do I say I liked this, but also absolutely did not without sounding dumb? In a technical sense, The Housemaid was everything a thriller should be; it kept me guessing, it was full of twists and turns I didn’t see coming, and it had the creepy characters necessary to keep things rolling, but also… this could have been solved in like 30 seconds flat if people just used their phones and/or communicated properly. 

Playing it as it happened in the book, we are introduced to Millie Calloway, a recently released parolee who just spent ten years – TEN YEARS – in jail and yet… doesn’t seem to give a f*** about it. I can’t tell whether to praise her for being an entirely unbothered queen or question if she just absolutely lost her mind there and has been completely desensitized to reality. Either way, girl don’t care. After being fired from her last job and being evicted from her apartment, Millie can’t believe her good fortune when she stumbles across a job listing for a live-in housemaid position for the wealthy Winchester family. However, as said above, she quickly learns that the offer is a little too good to be true. 

For starters, she has to put up with the supposedly insane Nina Winchester. The matriarch of the suburbia clan has sure signs of bipolar disorder, making every interaction between the two women a walking disaster.  Millie also has to fight off her growing feelings towards the “stud” of a man, Andrew Winchester, which honestly irked me to no end. I get you just got out of jail, but girl code still exists?? And, girly, you are hanging on by a thread anyway; maybe DON’T go after your employer’s husband? Lastly, we meet the ever-elusive Italian gardener, Enzo, who seems to be taking every opportunity to warn Millie away from the house, and instead of just doing Google translate, she stares at him in confusion. THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, IF YOU GET THE HEEBIE JEEBIES LOOK UP WHY. 

So, the stage is set with some unique characters, and the POV throughout the book changes off between two; I will let you discover who those might be, though. I liked the dual perspective we got, but it also disturbed me to see what the desperation of one party might do to another. The plot flowed relatively quickly once the characters were introduced and I found myself guessing for quite some time on the direction this book might take. Overall, and suspending the fact that the cops could have been/should have been involved far earlier than they ever were, this read was a fun one I suppose.