A review of The Housemaid’s Secret, by Freida McFadden. Bookouture, 2023.

I broke one of the core values of book reviewing and read this with high expectations after reading the first installment of the series. The Housemaid’s Secret follows Millie, a character from the original novel, while she continues to try to better her life. Things are improving for her since the events of the first book: she’s got an apartment, a boyfriend (not her boss this time), and a new job cleaning for the Garricks. But the Garricks are different—strange. Millie is not allowed to talk or interact with Wendy Garrick, the wife of Douglas Garrick, who is the CEO of a tech company and the one who hired Millie to clean their penthouse for them.

The Housemaid’s Secret is McFadden’s only sequel in her portfolio and, after reading it, I think I understand why. This sequel did not live up to the first novel, which is disappointing. The framing and structure was a copy-and-paste from the first installment in the series. When I started The Housemaid’s Secret, I was very curious to see how McFadden would elaborate on the events from the first book, but those events are swept under the rug and forgotten. I assumed McFadden must have had a different angle in mind to continue the series.

Millie mentions a “business partner” who would help her save women from domestic violence situations through his connections, and that they’d stopped doing that. She just cleans or babysits. Millie and her partner “agreed to never speak of those times ever again” (McFadden 47). This statement shifted the narrative in a different direction than what I was expecting. I wanted McFadden to expand on why they stopped because, at the end of the first novel, this business was emphasized. It felt like whiplash coming into the second novel, discovering that they no longer speak and never learning why.

Moreover, Millie was a likeable character in the first book, but seeing her “development” in this plot made me feel like McFadden wasted some potential. Millie lingers on her relationship and avoids moving in with her new boyfriend, creating more stress and issues than necessary on top of the main plot. As a reader, I did not care about her failing relationship and wanted to get back to the main plot. Going into this book, I was curious and excited to learn more about Millie and potentially see her turn her life around, but her subplots made me like her less as a character.

Millie’s boyfriend, Brock, is driving her home one night and Millie ponders about their relationship:

He hasn’t told me he loves me again since that day at the restaurant. I can tell he’s itching to say it, but he’s said it twice now, and I have said it zero times. If he says it again, I’ll either have to say it back or. . . Well, I have to say it back if I want this relationship to continue. There’s no question anymore. (80)

As a reader, an issue that frustrates me is miscommunication, or just a lack of communication, overall. Millie does not talk to Brock about her past or her current issues. Brock makes it very obvious that he wants to be with Millie and is patiently waiting for her to open up to him, but it never happens. I understand McFadden might have just been emphasizing that this wasn’t the right partner for her character, but the dynamic became old, as it went on for the whole book.

Despite my nitpicking, this it still a Freida McFadden novel. There was suspense and mystery that had my brain working along with the characters: like when Millie is working at the Garricks, cleaning like any other day, when she spots something in one of the bathrooms.

It’s a bloody handprint on the bathroom sink. Well, to be fair, it’s about half a handprint. Like somebody was gripping the sink with a hand caked in blood.

My eyes drop to the floor. I didn’t see it when I first walked in, but now I notice little droplets of blood on the linoleum tiles. They seem to form a little trail. (84)

My biggest shock while reading came with the plot twist. Wendy Garrick tricks Millie into thinking that her husband abuses her so that when Millie catches them in an altercation, Millie will have to kill him in self-defense… only, Millie never met the husband, Douglas Garrick; she met Wendy’s lover pretending to be Douglas. McFadden reveals that Wendy was having an affair, and put a blank in the gun so that her lover would play dead, and Millie would then be blamed for the murder of the real Douglas. Wendy frames Millie after manipulating her by making her think she was helping a powerless, abused wife.

At first I was upset that McFadden would use such a sensitive topic (domestic violence) to further her book, but in reality, I believe she did this on purpose. In the first novel, Millie’s boss was unlikeable until the twist. After that, the reader was able to understand her motive and realize that she wasn’t the monster she was pretending to be. This book and character (Wendy Garrick) are the opposite case. McFadden made me sympathize with her and want Millie to help her, but after the twist, she was truly a despicable character. She is nothing but a shallow gold digger. It takes serious talent to write these characters the way McFadden does.

This is from Wendy’s perspective when we get to her side of her story:

You must think I’m a terrible person. Would it help if I said that while Douglas never laid a finger on me, he was a terrible husband? He humiliated me and made my life miserable. And I would have been happy to get a divorce.

This did not need to end in his murder. That’s entirely on him.

[Millie] is an unfortunate causality. . . You might think that I am the one that deserves to go to prison for the rest of my life.

And the truth is, I don’t really care. (192)

There were parts and small subplots that I could have done without, but I’m not the author and this isn’t my work— it’s McFadden’s. The Housemaid’s Secret was still an interesting read that caught my attention, despite the unnecessary layering. Maybe this novel sets up the final installment in the series. Maybe not. I guess I’ll have to find out.

Edited by Cecilia Garcia Luengas