The Housemaid, Freida McFadden, 2022
Okay. Let me first preface my negativity by saying I did enjoy this novel! I read it in three days; it kept me on my toes; I looked forward to bedtime so I could read. Now, although it was fun to read, and the story telling was suspenseful enough, The Housemaid was not necessarily a good story. So here is why:
(Be forewarned this is full of spoilers).
Millie is an ex-con seeking work while living out of her car. Millie seems driven; she’s trying to transition back into her part as any good citizen. Although we aren’t told why her last ten years were spent in prison, we are told it was for a reason bad enough that her parents have disowned her and she can’t find nor keep a job. Despite this, I’ll admit I wasn’t necessarily convinced. From the very beginning until near the very end, she seems demure, non-confrontational, compassionate, and even somewhat naïve. Considering we’re reading her first person narration, we expect we can trust her very regular thoughts. This starts the many lapses in logic within the story. It is completely unbelievable when we later find she was in jail for MURDER. A violent murder! In defense of her friend, sure, but when we get to it, she suddenly becomes remorseless and cold! The issue is that this doesn’t read as a psychological switch so much as an inconsistency in the writing.
Again against all logic, Millie (remember, an ex-con!) lands a job as a live-in housemaid with a very wealthy family on Long Island. This is explained after the plot twist (her ex-con status turned out to actually help her case), but you’d expect she might have taken it as a red flag that her hirer didn’t think it was a bad idea to allow an ex-convict to sleep in the same home as herself, her husband, and her young daughter.
This is Nina, matron of the household. During the interview process, Nina and her 9 year old daughter Cecelia are very sweet, normal hosts. During this initial interview, Nina shows Millie to her potential living quarters, which is a closet-sized bedroom in the attic, with only a cot and a bucket in the closet. Stranger about this small room is that the lock is on BACKWARDS (to be locked from the outside). There are FINGERNAIL SCRATCH MARKS moving downward on the wooden door and there’s only one very small window, painted shut! Millie marks these things as weird, but naïvely passes them off as just that. Weird.
This is only one of many unsettling things that she ultimately passes off as strange. The most obvious is maybe the italian speaking neighbor who DIRECTLY tells her she is in danger. And there’s also Nina’s complete switch up on day one of the job. Where she was sweet at the interview, she’s suddenly a lunatic. The house, too, which was beautifully kept and tidied during the interview is suddenly disgusting like no house member has picked up a dirty dish in days. On move-in day, Nina is already dumping milk on the floor because she lost her notes for a PTA meeting. And she’s full-on LYING to her very handsome and compassionate husband, Andrew, about Millie’s role in it. Millie threw out my PTA notes!, she says. Millie doesn’t even dispute this! She just apologizes! (someone who was arrested for murder would be a little more quick to anger, no?)
Quickly, readers fall in love with Andrew (who, let it be noted, is not Cecelia’s biological father). Andrew is always completely on Millie’s side, and he tells Millie so. He, as well as everyone in the neighborhood, agrees that Nina is “high-strung.” This is another fact which doesn’t make much sense by the end of the narrative, but I’ll get there. I kept wondering why Millie wouldn’t just ask Andrew about the backward lock? Or the fire hazard window? For the sake of the plot, I can see why Freida left that out, but realistically, Millie very much would have asked.
Mille hears early on from the neighbors that Nina spent some time in a mental hospital. The book lets this be the reason Millie doesn’t completely blame her for being such a snotty bitch (lol), but truthfully, with the knowledge of her mental history, I couldn’t help but blame Millie for not reporting Nina’s behaviors! Not even to Andrew! This was a hazard for Nina, who is easily enraged, has lapses in memory, is at times delusional, and clearly going through another episode!
As the tension builds between Nina and Millie, I find myself cringing with every scene. It is awkward and uncomfortable. This is, by far, the highlight of the novel. The other highlight is Millie’s growing romance with Andrew, Nina’s husband. The two commiserating victims of Nina’s unexpected wrath are easily shipped. Whenever they’re left alone together (which, naturally for housemates, is often), Nina falls into a jealous rage—which Millie makes a point to drive home. Millie is constantly noting that Nina is overweight, has a big appetite (wtf), doesn’t take care of herself, etc. I can’t see what Andrew sees in her!, she says. The physical descriptors of Nina’s largeness are so overdone that I made a note pretty early on it must somehow be strewn into the plot twist—it is. However, the twist could’ve been done without it being borderline fatphobic. There’s even a few mocking remarks about Nina’s weight that felt inappropriate on Freida’s part. Anyway.
About halfway through the novel, Nina threatens to call the police for clothing Millie stole—which Millie didn’t steal—and Andrew, who has fallen in love with Millie, kicks Nina out. This is the first time in the novel that I realized the plot was lacking depth. Married for around 8-9 years (I can’t recall if they gave a set year), but after a fight—or, no, it felt more like a confrontation—lasting no more than ten minutes, Nina’s moving out? Is it that easy? No mention of her daughter, who was raised calling Andrew dad! And without any money of her own, nor living parents!
The situation with Millie, too, is strange. She’s kept out of Andrew’s way for the majority of the three months she’s been living there. They had one date, and now he’s kicked his wife and child out, and Millie willingly accepts her place in his beautiful home as the new girlfriend? I would have at least asked if he wants some time to think about it, no?
And then we get to the plot twist—as Millie is moving her stuff out of the attic, Andrew meets her upstairs and they fall asleep together there. Millie wakes up at 3am to Andrew gone, and a locked door.
Switch to Nina’s perspective.
Nina is…a very kind and awesome person (I like her more than Millie at the end of the novel). Before she met Andrew, she got pregnant with Cecilia and had to drop out of her PhD in order to work and provide for her daughter. She meets Andrew while working as a receptionist under his employee’s employee’s employee, or something like that.
Andrew is fantastic—a hero of sorts—and so they marry and she moves into his home. All is going great for the first few months until he lures her up to the attic and locks her in it. This shit is truly sadistic. He has her do sick things, like pulling out 100 strands of hair from the root when she forgot to dye her roots—and then do it a second time when the root is only connected to 99 of the 100 strands. She’s left for days with only three water bottles and a bucket to pee in, and finds her young Cecelia drugged and nearly drowned in the bathtub when she gets out. She’s admitted to the hospital for major depression and delusions.
Nina believes she is crazy. She’s horrified by her purported ability to hurt her daughter. This, I’ll say, is realistic. After being newly married to a great guy for months, no woman would so quickly believe he has done this. Through her time in the hospital, he is supportive and kind. It’s only when she returns from the psychiatric facility many months later, and is again locked in the attic that she realizes she isn’t crazy. I swear, you guys WHAT IN THE JIGSAW IS GOING ON HERE.
Being mentally abused each day and locked in an attic every few weeks will surely make a girl care less about her diet. The other explanation for Nina’s weight gain is that it’s a symptom of her anti-psychotic medication. This may be true, but my opinion still stands that Freida had no reason to emphasize how undesirable she looked, whether up 50 pounds or not.
Nina can’t leave Andrew because she doesn’t trust him not to hurt her daughter. And already she’s known as the town nut, so she’ll only be locked away, leaving her daughter with him.
So, this is why Millie is brought into the picture. Nina’s only way out is to be kicked out. Her plan all along was to hire a beautiful and desperate woman like Millie; a woman with nothing to lose. Nina’s been a bitch the whole time because her plan was to make Millie the victim so Andrew would want to save her. Also to make Millie hate her enough to sleep with him. This explanation makes sense, yes, but it makes it so Nina’s bitchiness was not her personality at all. She only became this way after Millie came into the picture. So why are all the neighbors saying she’s “high-strung”? And why is Andrew not questioning his wife’s major personality shift?!
The second part of Nina’s plan is for Millie to kill him. This is when we find out about Millie’s past with violence which, again, does not match her characterization up until this point at all. (She has a few other violent offenses than just the murder).
When the narrative swaps from Nina back to Millie—remember, locked in the attic—we lose some of the story’s tension. Exactly what had happened to Nina is now happening to Millie—girl locked in the attic and required to do some sadistic jigsaw shit to get out. Except it’s now less interesting. We just went from a heartbroken woman taking abuse for years to protect her vulnerable child, to a second woman who has been Andrew’s girlfriend only one day. And weirder is that Millie doesn’t express much hurt. She is shocked that Andrew is a monster, but we just read the whole story of how they fell in love, and as soon as she realizes he isn’t letting her out, that “love” just collapses.
Worse—she wants to kill him! Her thoughts suddenly do match her past. She is now a badass vigilante. She locks Andrew in the attic and dehydrates him, a slow and torturous death. Forgive me if this is an unpopular opinion, but although we know he’s a sadistic monster and deserving of this, Millie doesn’t yet! Wouldn’t any normal person be completely disillusioned as Nina was? Very confused; looking for some other explanation? I’d question if he was being forced by some maniac holding a gun to his head outside the door; or is he having a mental breakdown himself? Even possibly if this is some sexual fantasy he thinks I’m into. Nope. Millie gives it no second thought before locking him in there herself.
Suddenly he’s “that bastard,” which is a very impersonal way of speaking of someone. No sense!
Andrew as a character also makes no sense! He sent Nina to the attic for things like having her hair roots undyed and leaving a light on after she left a room, and suddenly when Millie moves in Nina is able to throw milk on the floor, smear toothpaste on her sink, leave dirty dishes on the counter, without being afraid of him? The abuse just stops now that the attic is occupied by Millie? How was Andrew—this sadistic man—suddenly okay with this? And with Andrew, there was no character flaw or foreshadowing! Nothing the reader could look back on and think OHH! The characters changed so drastically that it doesn’t feel like a plot “twist” so much as a change in the plot.
In the end, Nina feels bad that she’d planned to let Millie take the fall for his murder, despite how she set Millie up for it. So Nina decides to let Millie off free and tell police it was an accident. WHY DIDN’T SHE DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE? Because she was scared of being thrown in jail and leaving her daughter motherless? Well isn’t that the same situation now?! And why does it even make sense she’d want to take the fall for Millie in the first place?
The creepiest piece of the novel is at Andrew’s funeral when his mother subtly admits she had abused him in this way all along. This feels like the better plot twist, since it takes the plot and adds an extra dimension that the readers didn’t expect. But still, there’s something missing about how Andrew had gotten to the point of repeating the cycle. Maybe in books 2 or 3 there’ll be an explanation for this.
Final score: 3/5, and that’s only because it was enjoyable. Again, there were too many inconsistencies to call it good!
