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So, in the last few weeks, I decided to take a detour from my aggressive, obsessive reading of romance books and started reading thrillers.
Shocker, huh?
Well, I stumbled across ‘The Housemaid’ by Freida McFadden.
And boy, was I hooked.
I devoured the 300+ pages book in a span of hours, completely hooked from the beginning to the end.
So, let’s dive right in.
Millie’s POV
Wilhelmina Calloway, or Millie, is fresh out of jail, living in her car, and desperate for a job. Having spent 10 years in prison for murder has left her with very little prospect of one.
She applies to be a housemaid for a rich family in Long Island. We have the charming husband, Andrew Whittaker, his gorgeous wife Nina and their annoying little daughter CeCe. There is also a very hot Italian gardener named Enzo.
Millie passes her interview with Nina, albeit scared that a simple background check might screw everything up.
Once her position is finalized, she moves in with the Winchesters.
The first red flag is handed to her by Enzo, who warns her of the dangers of this job the second she walks in. The second red flag is the tiny room she has to stay in, a concern when she voices out loud, is only met with suspicion by Nina.
Her work includes cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry.
But slowly, she starts falling victim to Nina’s hot and cold behaviour.
Her employer first asks Millie to address her by just Nina, but when she has her guests over, berates her in front of them for the same. Next, she gifts Millie some of her own dresses which she has outgrown but then accuses her of stealing them.
In the midst of Nina’s behavioural whiplash, Millie starts getting close to Andrew, who seems charming, patient, and sexy of all things. My respect for Millie went down a notch when she started falling in love with him. I mean, come on.
That is until Nina’s story starts getting more ominous. A brief search of her medicine cabinet reveals that she is on anti-psychotics. An eavesdropped conversation brings to light that her beautiful employer tried to drown her baby and spent months in a psychiatric facility for it.
As the story progresses, an anticipated visit to the fertility clinic reveals that Nina can’t have a child. To bring them both back closer, the couple decides to go for a Broadway show. However, Nina deliberately gives Millie the wrong dates and thus cannot go.
When Nina is out of town, Andrew tells Millie that the two of them could go. Succumbing to their mutual attraction, they sleep together that night in the room Andrew booked for himself and his wife.
The next morning, they decide to keep it a secret and drive back home.
Millie eventually realizes that Nina knows everything.
After Nina has another one of her breakdowns and directs her rage at Millie, Andrew kicks her out, telling her that he will be filing for divorce.
The next morning, Andrew fires Enzo, insisting he is around too much. That evening, when he arrives home, Millie sleeps with him in her tiny room.
And this is where things take a turn.
When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she finds Andrew gone, the door locked and three books resting on the floor.
Nina’s POV
After being kicked out and threatened with divorce, Nina is enjoying a luxurious stay at a hotel.
And we then come to know about her side of the story.
She had become pregnant with CeCe after a one-night stand in college. Then she met Andrew and had a whirlwind romance followed by a wedding within 6 months of meeting him.
Initially, everything was going well, until one day, when Andrew deceptively locks Nina in the upstairs closet (now Millie’s room) for missing her hair colour appointment, as he likes her with blond hair.
In return for her freedom, he asks for 100 strands of her hair with the root ball attached. Shocked by this evil behaviour, she agrees and is eventually let out.
In order to ensure she doesn’t go to the authorities, Andrew frames her for trying to drown CeCe and puts her in a psychiatric facility. She is gaslit into thinking that she had imagined the whole scenario with the locked room.
However, all this changes when she is again locked into the closet by Andrew for forgetting to turn off the lights.
He makes Nina promise that if she talks to anyone about this, he is going to take Cece away or hurt her and that she would be sent back to the facility.
This embarks her on a journey of punishments over minor transgressions.
She eventually decides to confide in the gardener and together they hatch a plan to find a replacement for Nina, ie a housemaid by the name of Millie Calloway.
She is young, beautiful and can replace her in Andrew’s eyes.
Nina decides to act like a complete lunatic, playing into the part of the deranged wife Andrew had strategically placed into society. She sets up instances where she could push Millie and Andrew together, much like the Broadway show setup.
She knows that they both slept together and puts up the final performance, after which she is kicked out by Andrew.
Millie’s POV
When Millie wakes up in the closet, she is frantic. On the other side of the door, Andrew calmly explains that she forgot to put the books back on the shelf, and that is a privilege she has to earn.
He asks her to place the books on her abdomen for 3 hours as punishment.
Something she does.
But, what Andrew doesn’t know is that Millie is not like Nina. He never expected her to fight back.
And so, when her punishment is over, and Andrew pushes open the door, she sprays him with the pepper spray Nina had left behind.
As he screams in pain, Millie steals his phone and turns the tables on him by locking him in the room.
It is here that Millie’s reason for going to jail is revealed. Ten years ago, she had seen a guy trying to rape her friend and had killed him on the spot.
Now, Millie tortures Andrew by making him balance the books on his groin and pulling out some of his teeth.
She leaves him inside the closet for almost 6 days, until he dies of starvation.
Conclusion
Enzo, who had been watching the house, fears that Andrew did something to Millie. He calls Nina, who makes her way to her old home, afraid that she will find Millie’s body in the closet.
Instead, Millie appears in front of her and confesses the whole incident. Nina tells her to pack a bag and leave, while she calls the police.
She tells the police that she was not home, and that Andrew accidentally locked himself in the closet and died. She is afraid that the police would investigate and eventually find out the truth, considering his teeth had been pulled.
But it turns out, the investigating officer’s daughter had been engaged to Andrew and after she got out of the relationship, she had changed her name and moved away.
The officer rules it as an accidental death and closes the case.
At Andrew's wake, his mother walks up to Nina and tells her that she is glad she finally stepped up and punished her son for his mistakes, indicating that she used to torture him similarly during his childhood.
What. A. Bitch.
Finally, Nina and Enzo move away together with CeCe, and so does Millie, living off the money Nina sends her.
The book ends with Millie taking up a job with a couple as their housemaid. It is revealed that her new employer is abusing his wife and thus begins Millie’s next journey as the vigilante.
‘The Housemaid’ by Freida McFadden is amazingly thrilling and unputdownable. I could not stop reading. The characters, the plot twists, the entire story - I read it all in one go.
If you want to read this deliciously thrilling book yourself, it is available on Kindle Unlimited for free. Buy it here.
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