Books Like The Housemaid: 9 Twisty Domestic Thrillers to Read Next
Unreliable narrators, rich families with rotten secrets and twists you will want to text someone about
Freida McFadden's The Housemaid is the book we hand to customers who say they have not been able to finish anything lately, because nobody fails to finish this one. A young woman with a past takes a live-in job with the wealthy, picture-perfect Winchester family, and within a few chapters you realise that every single person in that house is lying about something. The chapters are short, the narrator is not telling you everything, the power keeps changing hands, and the twists land like trapdoors: just when you think you know whose story this is, the floor gives way.
That combination (domestic setting, unreliable narration, rich-family rot, a twist every few chapters) is its own thriving genre, and the shelf runs deep. Here are nine we recommend at Ever After Books when someone finishes The Housemaid at 2am and comes in the next day asking what on earth to read now.
What to read if you love The Housemaid
The Housemaid's Secret by Freida McFadden
The obvious first stop: the direct sequel. Millie takes another job with another wealthy couple, hears something she should not through a closed door, and the trapdoor chapters start all over again. It keeps the short-chapter, one-more-page engine of the original and adds a new household of liars to pick apart. If you simply want that exact feeling again, it is right here.
