The Housemaid by Freida McFadden is, without doubt, the most enthralling, gripping and enjoyable thriller I have read in a long time.
This is how you write a real, good page-turner. This is how to utterly engage a reader so much that you find it difficult to put the book down. This is how you write the PERFECT cliff-hanger novel.
Now I am not going to give too much away of this novel for fear of spoiling it for you . Neither am I going to broach the subject of the movie version, which has just been released in all the cinemas. But what I am going to do is to simply give you a brief synopsis of the story, followed by a few words on why I am loving this novel so much, and why I think you should check it out for yourself.
OK, here we go. So The Housemaid is a twisty psychological thriller that tells the story of Millie Calloway, a young girl who has just been released from prison, and who is now looking for a job with a view to securing a fresh start in society. She also needs to start earning a steady wage to lift her out of poverty. So when she manages to eventually land a live-in housemaid job with the wealthy, seemingly respectable Winchester family in Long Island, she thinks that everything is starting to go her way, as she attempts to put her dark secret of her criminal past behind her.
Unfortunately, as the novel progresses, we soon learn that Millie’s dream job is starting to turn into a living nightmare, as the mentally-volatile, erratic matriarch of the family, Nina, starts behaving in a most disturbing – and, at times, quite terrifying – fashion towards her new employee. Then there is the matter of the creepy attic room . . .
And that’s not all, because further on in the book, the story suddenly takes a dramatic, totally unexpected plot twist, as the persepective changes from the female protagonist to that of Nina. And that is when all hell breaks loose!
And that is all I am going to say about The Housemaid, because I want YOU to read it for yourself, to go in blind, and to go on the same kind of emotional, gripping roller-coaster ride that I have been on with this, well, just breathtakingly captivating, utterly unpredictable story.
This the first Freida McFadden novel I have ever read, and if all her other novels are as brilliant as The Housemaid is, well, I will definitely be adding her name to my personal list of top thriller writers.
In short, The Housemaid was pleasingly packed with all the major features I always love in my stories: great characters, a gripping plot, and an almost palpable atmosphere of tension and unease building up and building up as the story progresses.
So if you love Hitchcockian stories with plenty of dark moments and jaw-dropping twists, then I think you will love The Housemaid. I certainly do!
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