The Housemaid's Secret

The Housemaid's Secret is a thriller by the American writer Freida McFadden, published in 2023.

The novel is told in the first person by the woman doing the work, which is what makes the details it notices so effective: the parts of the apartment she is not shown, the guest room she is not allowed into, the sounds a building makes at night, and the way a person with something to hide reads another person's silence as agreement. The book also uses the job itself as a source of dread, since somebody paid to be in a house and not to ask questions has exactly the right view of a household's secrets and no power at all to act on what she sees. The plot turns on what is behind the closed door, and the book is careful about motive, so that the reader's sympathy shifts more than once before the explanation arrives. McFadden writes short chapters and keeps the pace high, and her novels in this market have become some of the most widely read thrillers of the decade. This book follows her earlier novel about the same narrator, and it assumes a reader who is willing to spend the first half of a chapter being wrong about what is happening.