The Housemaid’s Secret By Freida McFadden Review

Note: “The Housemaid’s Secret” By Freida McFadden is the second book of the series. The first is The Housemaid and I would highly recommend reading that one before reading this one so as to better understand the plot. Feel free to read my review of The Housemaid by clicking here. Lastly, The Housemaid’s Secret By Freida McFadden review although minimal contains spoilers for the book. If you would prefer to avoid any spoilers altogether please don’t read this review until you have read the book.

About The Author

New York Times, Amazon Charts, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author Freida McFadden is a practicing physician specializing in brain injury who has penned multiple bestselling psychological thrillers and medical humor novels. Freida’s work has been selected as one of Amazon Editors’ best books of the year, and she is a winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for best paperback. Her novels have been translated into over 30 languages.

Freida lives with her family and black cat in a centuries-old three-story home overlooking the ocean, with staircases that creak and moan with each step, and nobody could hear you if you scream. Unless you scream really loudly, maybe.

Source: about

The Housemaid’s Secret By Freida McFadden Summary

“Don’t go in the guest bedroom.” A shadow falls on Douglas Garrick’s face as he touches the door with his fingertips. “My wife… she’s very ill.” As he continues showing me their incredible penthouse apartment, I have a terrible feeling about the woman behind closed doors. But I can’t risk losing this job—not if I want to keep my darkest secret safe…

It’s hard to find an employer who doesn’t ask too many questions about my past. So I thank my lucky stars that the Garricks miraculously give me a job, cleaning their stunning penthouse with views across the city and preparing fancy meals in their shiny kitchen. I can work here for a while, stay quiet until I get what I want.

It’s almost perfect. But I still haven’t met Mrs Garrick, or seen inside the guest bedroom. I’m sure I hear her crying. I notice spots of blood around the neck of her white nightgowns when I’m doing laundry. And one day I can’t help but knock on the door. When it gently swings open, what I see inside changes everything…

That’s when I make a promise. After all, I’ve done this before. I can protect Mrs Garrick while keeping my own secrets locked up safe.

Douglas Garrick has done wrong. He is going to pay. It’s simply a question of how far I’m willing to go…

The Housemaid’s Secret By Freida McFadden Review

When I reviewed the last book, I decided to have sections for the good and the bad. That way, you can see for yourselves if it’s worth the read. I decided to do the same for this review too.

I loved reading The Housemaid and was extremely excited about this book. So much so that I actually ended up preordering the book. However, that was months ago and honestly it took me a while to finish this book. It could have been that I got very busy but it’s also that I didn’t get into this book as much as I did The Housemaid. More on that later.

The Housemaid’s Secret is centred around Millie, the housemaid from the first book. It picks up after a few years since the first book and Millie is now studying to become a social worker. She’s also working on the side as a housemaid and babysitter just like she did before. However, things aren’t so great in her life and it does seem like she’s hit rock bottom until she gets a call from a tech billionaire looking to hire her. And he does, in fact, hire her after a brief interview. That’s when things start getting interesting.

The Good

I think Freida McFadden is a really talented story teller. She has a way of incorporating these crazy twists and turns into her story that makes you want to keep reading ahead. If you’ve never read anything by her, you absolutely need to. So, if like me you’re a fan of twists and turns and the occasional murderous character/characters, this is the book for you. This is one of the best parts of the book.

I enjoyed that in this book we got to learn more about Millie. I felt like that was missing from the last book. And it helped me connect better with her character. To be honest, I didn’t like her that much in the first book but that was the writers intent at least in the first part of the book. But with this book, I feel like I warmed up to her much more.

Like the first book, this book has multiple pov’s. And this is something I’m a big fan of and enjoyed in the last book too. Personally, I don’t have a great attention span (thanks social media!) which means it’s hard to keep my attention. But reading multiple pov’s helps me not get bored. It keeps my attention and I think it’s a great way to help the story really come to life for the reader when they know exactly what each character is thinking and is like in their own head.

Like her last book, this book was really well written. Even though it had multiple pov’s it was easy to follow and understand. The book was entertaining and interesting once you got into it and the story began to progress a bit more.

The Bad

For those of you that didn’t read my review of the first book in this series, The Housemaid, I actually randomly bought it on Kindle after reading a positive review. And wow was it a great decision. I finished the entire book in a day. Work can wait, I never claimed to be no professional (I am, please hire me!). But seriously, that book had me hooked. This one, not so much. It wasn’t that The Housemaid’s Secret By Freida McFadden was bad. It wasn’t. The book was quite interesting. It just wasn’t as good as the first one. And this is honestly just my opinion.

Personally, I found it hard to get into from the get go. Even in the first book, the start was a bit slow because she was still introducing the characters and setting the scene. But this one wasn’t just slow, it was kind of boring. It took me a while to read on and really get into the more exciting part of the story because my brain was bored. And that’s why I was avoiding finishing it because I just couldn’t get hooked like the last book.

Another thing was that I read a lot of murder mystery books and I’ve become someone who can usually smell the twists and turns a mile away. However, The Housemaid still caught me by surprise since I had never read anything by McFadden before. With this book, I kind of knew what the major twist was going to be. Like, I could guess it after reading the first book and knowing McFadden’s style. Still, it was interesting and I liked the twist. It just wasn’t super surprising like the first book.

Overall

I would still very much recommend reading The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden. Personally, I don’t think it lived up to my expectations in comparison to the first book in this series. However, it’s still a great book at the end of the day. Once you get into it and the story progresses it gets quite interesting.

Have you read The Housemaid or The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden? If you have do let me know what you thought of the books in the comments below. Or simply stop by and say hi!

Find the book on:

Amazon

Goodreads

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