Millie Calloway has a driving need to help women in trouble. In the past, this has gotten her into some bad situations. But that’s all behind her now; she’s going to college to get her degree in social work so she can help women the legal way. But in the meantime, she still has bills to pay, so she cleans houses. Her new clients are a little strange. Mr. Garrick gives her the creeps, and she’s never even seen Mrs. Garrick. Then one day Millie finds blood in the bathroom and finally meets Mrs. Garrick. Their meeting convinces her that she has to help Mrs. Garrick, but how far is she willing to go to save another woman? Find out in Freida McFadden’s intense thriller The Housemaid’s Secrets.
[Warning: My review of The Housemaid’s Secrets contains some spoilers!]
Millie just can’t help herself
When Millie sees someone who needs help, she can’t stop herself. She has to help them. It haunts her. In the past, this urge has gotten her into some pretty hot water, but she’s grown since then. Now Millie is going to college. She’s working on a social work degree so she can help people in an official capacity instead of through the network of whispers that have led to her help in the past.
But college costs money, and even though she has a boyfriend who’d happily pay for it all, Millie wants to earn it herself. So she keeps cleaning houses for rich women with nothing better to do. When she gets a call from Mr. Garrick, the pay is phenomenal, so despite some initial misgivings, Millie signs up. Garrick has one big rule, though: his wife is very sick and can’t be disturbed. Millie figures if the hardest thing she has to do is not talk to someone, she can handle that.
But it turns out she can’t handle that, because Mrs. Garrick never comes out of her room. Millie can hear her moving around, and has even heard her crying, but she’s never seen the woman. Then one day she finds blood all over the bathroom and trailing down the hall to the infamous Mrs. Garrick’s room. Millie decides that enough is enough; she needs to know that she’s okay. She knocks on the door and refuses to go away until Mrs. Garrick opens the door. When she does, all of Millie’s worst fears are confirmed. Now Millie has a choice: walk away and pretend she didn’t see anything, or help Mrs. Garrick (Wendy) escape.
Oh who are we kidding, for Millie there’s no choice. She’ll do anything to help Wendy get away. But there is more going on in that penthouse than Millie knows. She’ll do just about anything to help a woman in need, but what if she ends up being the one who needs help?
Another suspense-filled thriller full of twists and turns
A simple story of Millie trying to help a woman escape from an abusive relationship would be a thriller in its own right. Abusers don’t tend to let go easily and rarely have a problem extending their punishment to those who oppose them. There would be danger, there would be suspense, there would be drama.
But since The Housemaid’s Secrets is by McFadden, a straightforward story just isn’t gonna cut it. McFadden excels at twisting the truth. She presents one side of a situation and has you convinced you know what’s going on, then turns everything on its head when she shows you the backside of the picture, sending you careening off in a new direction with your adrenaline pumping, your heart pounding, and your head frozen in fear as you wait to see how it all turns out.
McFadden does this not once or even twice but over and over in The Housemaid’s Secrets. Some of the twists make you smile, some make you gasp, and some leave you quivering in fear. The ultimate twist is when Millie finds out just what all her help has added up to over the years. Let’s just say that her efforts have not gone unnoticed, which ends up being both a blessing and a curse for Millie.
I love Freida McFadden
What I love best about McFadden’s writing is that she surprises me. I know this sounds a little braggy, but I don’t often get truly surprised by plot twists. I’m not saying that I’m smarter than the average bear; I’m saying I’ve read between three and twenty (oh, those carefree days of childhood when I just read all the time) books a week for about 35 years now. That’s a lot of books. And like the saying goes, there are only ten original stories, and nine of them were plagiarized. Plots tend to follow rhythms, and I can usually see what’s going to happen before it does. At best, an author will leave me with two to three guesses about what will happen and one of them is right. Actually surprising me is rare.
But McFadden is very good at surprising me. Partly it’s the unreliable narrator that she likes to use. Partly it’s the (I may be inventing this term) presumed narrator, where we think it’s one person telling the story, but it’s actually someone else. Partly it’s just creative storytelling that refuses to follow the accepted pattern. Add it all up, and you get something that’s greater than the sum of its parts, and I love it. Keep on writing, McFadden, and I’ll keep on reading!
Rating: 10/10
The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden is available now!
Learn more about the book at the official website for the title.
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