The Housemaid by Freida McFadden is a good psychological thriller for beginners. I read it in 2025, about 6 months before the release of the movie The Housemaid, based on the book.
I will tell you that it was worth reading the book because I understood how a sociopath’s behavior works, and yes, the book is a little different from the movie. There are many things in the movie that do not coincide with the accounts in the book. Therefore, if you have not read the book, but want to know what it is about, I will summarize the book in detail for you and tell you my opinion.
I warn you that things are not what they seem, and the plot is twisted and the book is full of mystery.
Table of Contents
The beginning of the book
The book begins with a prologue, that is, with part of the final scene, in which there is a murder. It is not known who died, but the protagonist of the book is at the scene. After the prologue, the following pages tell the events before the murder, three months ago. Thus, this is where the story begins.
The main character is Millie Calloway, a woman in her late 30s who has been in prison for killing a rapist who attacked her friend. After ten years out of prison, Millie tries to integrate into society. She doesn’t have a proper home, but lives in a cheap car.
Differences from the film
In order to live a normal life, Millie decides to get a job as a housekeeper. She manages to create a fake resume and looks for work. She finally manages to get an interview with the wealthy Winchester family. The interviewer is Nina Winchester, a blonde, bobbed-haired woman in her 40s. Millie, on the other hand, is described as being 10 years younger than Nina, and has gray-blonde hair. Here we can see that Nina’s appearance in the book does not correspond to the actress who plays her in the film
In addition to protagonist Millie Calloway and supporting character Nina Winchester, we have Nina’s 11-year-old daughter, Cecelia. Then there’s Nina’s husband, Andrew Winchester, who isn’t Cecelia’s biological father, but didn’t adopt her either, but instead takes care of her. Then there’s Enzo, an Italian gardener who works for the family.
Millie starts working for the Winchester family
Arriving at the Winchester family home, Millie meets Enzo, a handsome, tall, muscular man with tattoos and dark eyes. The only flaw is his silence. He doesn’t seem to be a talkative person, he greets Millie in Italian and tries to warn her to be careful, using the word dangerous. But Millie doesn’t understand what he means.
Andrew is described in the book as a rich and very handsome man. More precisely, handsome because of his brown, but penetrating eyes. Then, his dark hair, with a little beard.
The author of the book describes it with the following quote:
“He’s handsome, piercing brown eyes, mahogany hair, and a sexy dimple in his chin.”
At first glance, Andrew seems madly in love with Nina and acts tenderly towards her as he greets Millie, then leaves for work, as he is the owner of a business.
Who do you think is the villain?
Well, you’ll find out at the end of the article. Nothing is what it seems!
After Millie is hired as a housekeeper, she begins to do the duties she was hired to do. She starts with the kitchen because it was very dirty.
After some time, Cecelia appears in the kitchen.
The first strange scene
Cecelia is a little blonde girl who looks like a ghost. She is beautiful, but she looks a little scary because she is wearing a white, Victorian dress. Looking past her appearance, Cecelia asks Millie for food, and she gives her cookies and a jar of peanut butter, which she takes from the pantry. After the girl tastes it, she realizes that it is peanut butter and tells her that she is allergic. She accuses Millie of trying to kill her.
The truth is that Millie didn’t mean to, she didn’t know that Cecelia was allergic to peanut butter because Nina didn’t tell her about any allergies. Strangely, Millie wonders why there is peanut butter in the house if Cecelia is allergic? While the girl is screaming, Nina also appears. Cecelia’s mother accuses Millie of being unconscious because she made her aware of the fact that Cecelia was allergic. The truth is that she didn’t tell her. But in order not to lose her job, Millie apologizes and promises that the mistake won’t happen again. Nina forgives her.
Later, as dinner approaches, Andrew comes home and finds Millie in the kitchen. He appreciates her cooking and her efforts as a housekeeper. He seems in love with his wife and has eyes only for her, and to Millie he is a respectful boss.
The second strange scene
When bedtime approaches, Millie goes to her room, the size of a small room or a basement, with a tiny window that doesn’t open. The room looks scary compared to the luxury of Winchester rooms, but for Millie it’s better than sleeping in the back seat of her car.
Entering the room, she manages to fall asleep, but when she wakes up at night to go to the kitchen, she notices that the door is locked from the outside. She starts to get scared, especially when she sees that she has no signal in the room and she can’t even call the police. All she can do is struggle to open the door. After a few failed attempts, she manages to open the door.
Millie doesn’t understand what happened, she thinks maybe Nina locked it, but why? Or she thinks the door got stuck, and it wasn’t locked at all.
After this phase, throughout the book it is narrated how Nina starts to behave badly towards Millie. She accuses her of putting her notes in the fridge, then of stealing her clothes, which she herself gave her a few days before. Andrew notices Nina’s anger and accusations and tries to calm her down. Millie, on the other hand, does not know what to believe anymore, is Nina sick? But Andrew tries to apologize secretly to Millie, implying that he believes her and that Nina is a difficult person. He even goes so far as to help Millie clean up the mess.
After a few events, Millie begins to believe that Nina is crazy, and her speculations are indirectly confirmed by Nina’s friends, who, in the context of Nina’s invitation to the Winchester family garden, secretly gossip about her. It is Millie who secretly overhears the gossip, as she is assigned to bring treats to the guests’ table.
The relationship between Nina and Andrew Winchester
The relationship between the two spouses is going well. Andrew is tender with his wife. However, the book tells of a quarrel between the two spouses, more of a misunderstanding. Andrew and Nina want to have a child together, but the in vitro fertilization treatment does not work. Nina is sorry because she cannot give Andrew a child, but he is affectionate with her and hopes that they will have a child, eventually.
Millie hears the argument from her room, and she decides to go downstairs to find out what’s going on. However, she accidentally makes a sound that Nina hears. Nina goes to her and accuses her of spying, asking her to go to her room.
You won’t believe the twist in the story in the book!
A few days after that scene, Andrew asks Millie to buy tickets to a concert for him and Nina and then make a hotel reservation. The goal was to make Nina happy. Millie listened to the boss’s request, but tells Nina about the surprise so she can choose an available day. Nina tells Millie the day she is available. Millie makes the reservation and buys the ticket.
After Andrew comes home, she tells the couple when the reservation is. However, Nina accuses Millie of booking the wrong date, that she can’t go on the reserved day because her daughter has camp. However, Nina is lying here. Millie doesn’t understand why she’s doing this, but she keeps quiet because there’s a possibility that she’ll have to pay for the mistake with her own money. Andrew tries to calm his wife down and tells her that he’ll take care of the cancellation. He starts to feel bad for Millie, so he agrees to take care of the cancellation.
A few days later, Nina finds out that Andrew has managed to cancel the reservation, and is now packing to go camping for two weeks with Cecelia. After his wife leaves, left alone with Millie, Andrew confesses to her that he has fallen madly in love with her. In addition, he tells her that he did not cancel the hotel reservation and the concert tickets. Thus, he proposes to her to come with him. Millie accepts because he is a handsome man, she has not had a relationship since she went to prison. They go together in a car. On the way, a temptation arises between the two.
Personal opinion about the romantic scene in the book, why is it not like the one in the movie?
I liked that this book doesn’t have smut, but focuses on temptation, but not explicitly, but innocently. The book only states that the two had a romantic relationship, but it’s not detailed, just like it appears in the movie. It’s somewhat normal, the film production tried to stage romantic sequences just to attract the audience’s attention. The book doesn’t emphasize this aspect. That’s what I really liked about the book, the fact that the story focuses on action, on psychological drama and not on romance, as in the movie. I want to mention that Andrew didn’t react well, I didn’t like the fact that he is disloyal.
Things start to change after Nina arrives
Arriving home after two weeks of camp, Nina continues her life, unaware that her husband has been cheating on her with the housekeeper. But is it as Millie thinks?
Millie thinks Nina is crazy because she’s heard about her past. People who know Nina know that she threw Cecelia in the bathtub when she was a baby, trying to kill her. But is that true? You’ll find out below, you’ll be shocked!
Some time has passed, not much, and Andrew begins to develop feelings for Millie, so he decides to tell Nina the truth about his affair with Millie. He asks Nina for a divorce and throws her out of the house, along with Cecelia.
Nina seems shocked and throws a tantrum, accusing Millie of stealing her husband. Seeing that Andrew doesn’t want her in the house anymore, she packs her bags and leaves.
Is Andrew the perfect boyfriend?
After Nina leaves, Andrew goes to work, and Millie stays at home, happy to be Andrew’s girlfriend. Meanwhile, after Andrew comes home, he tells the gardener Enzo that he no longer needs his services and thanks him for his years of work. Before leaving, in Andrew’s absence, Enzo tells Millie that she is in real danger and makes it clear that Nina is not the danger. Millie doesn’t understand.
After Enzo leaves, Andrew and Millie spend time together, and he is tender towards her.
Andrew is getting weird!
The next day Andrew goes to work, and Millie stays home. She sees some books and decides to leaf through them, leaving them on the table. When Andrew comes home from work, he asks her what she did all day, and she tells him about the books. So far, things are going well, and they end up spending romantic moments together. This time in the small room where Millie lived as a housekeeper. When Millie wakes up at three in the morning, she finds that Andrew is not with her, and the room is locked from the outside. Millie begins to panic.
The Stories of Nina Winchester
Nina tells the reader the true face of Andrew. He is a diabolical and tyrannical man. His traits emerge from the experience she had in her relationship with him. Thus, Nina reports that she met Andrew at his firm, at that time she was a single mother, having just given birth to Cecelia. Nina implies that Andrew falls in love with women who are put in the position of victims.
She also says that Andrew fell in love with her when he saw her boss scold her because he saw milk gushing out on her shirt, exposing her bust. She explained that she tried to put milk in a bottle in the bathroom to feed her baby later, but her boss wouldn’t listen. In fact, Andrew is the founder of the company, and Nina’s boss is his subordinate.
Hearing that Nina is being scolded, Andrew sees her as a victim and begins to like her. Andrew wants to get to know her, and because she was a single mother, Nina is trying to find a father figure for her child, so she agrees to meet Andrew. Plus, she finds him attractive and tender.
Over time, Andrew shows his true colors. After they move in together following their marriage, Andrew is never the same.
After a few nights spent together, Andrew notices that Nina is no longer blonde at the roots, as he likes. As such, he manages to lock her in the cellar that, ten years later, would be inhabited by Millie. The reason for the lock is trivial, just because she didn’t take care to keep her blonde ends. He is obsessed with blonde and white clothes. At first, Nina thinks it’s a mistake and that the door has locked itself, but from behind the door, Andrew’s voice is heard, telling her that he will let her leave the cellar if she pays the consequences.
Specifically, in exchange for her freedom, Nina must pull out her roots and give them to him in a small bag. At first, Nina thinks it’s a joke and tries to trick him, but it doesn’t work because she’s being filmed. If she doesn’t do what she’s told, she won’t leave the room. Thus, she is forced to pull out a significant number of her hair.
After doing this, Andrew lets her out of the cellar. She scolds him, he apologizes, and she realizes that she is living a lie that she has to live with because she couldn’t get rid of Andrew. Thus, she realizes that he is a sociopath and learns to live with it until she finds a solution. Although Andrew had problems, he was not always fixated on Nina. He also had moments when he was tender with her, wanting to have a child with her. He loved her obsessively and toxically.
She learned to live with him, until she reached the limit. She needs another victim so that she and her daughter can escape this situation. Although she lived with Andrew for almost 10 years, the worst thing was that he behaved nicely with Cecelia, but strangely with her mother.
Nina is not crazy!
After ten years of being with Andrew, Nina decides to hire Millie to hack her husband. But Millie wouldn’t know this, because she wouldn’t accept it. Nina needed a plan. So she finds Millie, analyzes her past, sees that she did prison for killing a rapist and thinks she’s the perfect victim. Also, the incident where she was supposed to try to drown her baby is fake. Andrew blamed her for making it hard for her to leave him and tried to make her crazy to outsiders.
The plan wouldn’t have worked if it hadn’t been made by the gardener Enzo, with whom Nina had an affair, after Enzo noticed the torments Nina went through in her relationship with Andrew. Empathetic by nature, Enzo decides to make a plan to get Nina out of Andrew’s hands, without her running away from him.
So, hiring a housekeeper was part of the plan. Nina was mean to Millie in front of Andrew so that he would see her as a victim and fall in love with her. Even the tickets and the hotel were part of the plan. Millie and Andrew had to have romantic moments so that Andrew would forget Nina.
Returning to Millie’s stories in the present
Locked in the small room with only one window, Millie realizes that Andrew locked her in and that he is not the man she knew. Nina was not dangerous, he was. After an evening spent together, the next morning she finds herself locked in the cellar, with Andrew behind the door.
Millie begs him to let her out of the room, but he tells her he won’t leave until he pays the consequences for reading the books from the library the other day and leaving them on the coffee table. Another trivial reason, except the victim is the mistress, not the wife.
As a result, Millie is forced to balance several heavy books on her stomach. Millie had not noticed the books, so Andrew secretly brought them into the cellar. After several unsuccessful attempts, Millie learns that she cannot lie to Andrew because she is being filmed. Having no choice, Millie obeys the order, defecates in a bucket in the room and begins to hold the books for two hours and 50 minutes. But Andrew asks for exactly three hours. As a result, she is given another three hours because she did not do it correctly the first time. Annoyed by this, after Millie leaves the cellar, she tricks Andrew, and now he remains locked in the cellar.
Sweet revenge
Millie takes revenge by forcing Andrew to pull a tooth out. He refuses, but knowing he can’t get out of the cellar, she agrees. Millie watches him pull a tooth out. When he’s done, Millie tells him that he still has to pull your teeth out because he didn’t do anything right. Andrew gets angry and tries to escape, but fails. In the end, he pulls his teeth out alive, until he reaches despair and, finally, dies. Millie watches on camera as he takes his last breath.
Then Enzo comes into play, who, fearing for Millie’s life, ends up thinking of rescuing her from Andrew’s hands, but once he arrives, he finds that Andrew is already dead. Millie and Enzo find a way to hide the murder from the police, with the help of Nina. Millie finds out about the plan of the two and that she was the perfect victim. Between Nina and Enzo it was just an affair, Nina did not stay with him. But, in return, Enzo begins a love affair with Millie.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed my brief summary and my opinion about this psychological thriller. I can tell you that I anticipated some aspects as a reader, that is, the book is not complex, a beginner reader can understand it well. Also, some scenes may seem strange, but I enjoyed reading it.
Please write me in the comments your opinion about the book. If you have read it or are going to read it. Or maybe you have only seen the movie? I hope you liked the summary and my opinion about the story. Please write me in the comments your opinion about the book. What do you think of the plot?
If you liked this story, also read my review of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.