Trigger warning: This article contains references to blood and acts of killing. Reader discretion is advised.
In the literary world, there was once a time when thrillers meant private investigators, razor-sharp detectives, and grumpy police officers, all determined to catch a cold-blooded killer. Add in sly assassinations, political intrigue, and tons of forensic evidence to the mix, and you have a classic thriller novel at your disposal. Although these elements are widely used in literary fiction, they’re gradually losing their appeal among recent readers. In fact, I’ve come to notice the growing shift from typical “detective-led” thrillers to ones filled with domestic suspense and psychological depth.
I remember picking up The Housemaid by Freida McFadden, thinking of it as a casual bedtime read. Instead, I finished it in one sitting, wide-eyed and utterly glued to the pages of the book. Every now and then, a silent gasp would come out of me as I found myself engrossed in the enigma of it all, where moral lines were blurred beyond recognition, and every single character was a double-edged sword. By sunrise, the book was filled with sticky tabs, dozens of highlights, and random scribbles of thoughts splayed across page margins. That day, I definitely remembered to lock my door before sleeping.
It was that very experience that made Freida McFadden one of my favorite thriller authors. So what exactly makes her books an absolute page-turner?
“The door isn’t stuck. It’s locked.”
― Freida McFadden, The Housemaid
One such reason is McFadden’s ability to transform ordinary, domestic spaces into psychological traps. In The Housemaid, Millie arrives at the Winchester mansion with a perfect job to give her a fresh start. What was initially thought to be a safety net quickly becomes a place of surveillance and control. Throughout the novel, Millie unravels subtler aspects of the house, such as doors that lock only from the outside, lethal medications stashed away in bathroom drawers, and laundry clothes stained with blood. She’s also assigned a tiny attic to stay in with walls inscribed by mysterious scratches. Screams echo behind expensive walls, and the kitchen, a place typically associated with warmth and comfort, becomes a site of punishment and scrutiny. Similarly, in her book Never Lie, Tricia and Ethan stumble upon a lonely, snow-bound mansion during their house-hunting search. What once seemed like a luxurious mansion slowly reveals its darker secrets: hidden rooms (love those), trauma-filled cassette tapes of therapy recordings, and an eerie portrait of a woman whose eyes seem to follow you everywhere you go (yikes). Through this, McFadden reveals how luxury often hides cruelty and how a seemingly ordinary and spotless house isn’t so perfect after all.
“Women aren’t weak because they’re trapped; they become dangerous because they’re trapped.”
– Freida McFadden, The Housemaid
Another reason why I found her books so engrossing was the dynamic shifts in power play between various characters. I noticed how McFadden tends to invert the hierarchy of social class by placing women, typically those who conform to certain societal roles (such as an obedient worker, a devoted wife, or a polite colleague), at the forefront of the narrative. Instead of portraying these characters as weak and vulnerable, McFadden transforms their qualities of silence, empathy, and adaptability into powerful weapons of survival. This gives her characters an undercurrent of resistance—a quality that deeply resonated with not just me but countless other readers.
Take Millie from The Housemaid trilogy. A character shrouded in poverty soon becomes a hidden threat with her concealed criminal past and her unsettling ability to kill without hesitation. Similarly, in The Coworker, Dawn is ridiculed for being too quiet and “different” from the rest. Not to mention, her weird obsession with turtles, oversized clothing, and her predilection for monochromatic meals. Nonetheless, her sharp observation skills enable her to uncover secrets, break into houses, plant fingerprints, and even frame her bully for a crime she didn’t commit. McFadden’s writing allowed me to look at characters through a different lens: one in which the quiet ones are often overlooked and underestimated.
“My mother always says the only way two people can keep a secret,” she says, “is if one of them is dead.”
― Freida McFadden, Never Lie
The reason why McFadden’s books seem so addictive and bingeable is because of their cleverly crafted structure. Having read many of her books myself, I tend to enjoy shorter chapters that seem to mimic the attention-grabbing and dopamine-filled rhythm of Instagram reels and YouTube shorts.
McFadden’s novels often feature multiple plot twists scattered throughout the narrative as opposed to a single, often predictable midpoint climax. As readers, we sit there, teetering on the edge of our seats, rewarded with the gratifying experience of plot twist after plot twist, where the mystery never seems to end. Whether it’s a missing clue, a mysterious recording, an overheard conversation, or a jaw-dropping confession from a protagonist that suddenly changes my entire perception of the character—these little bouts of suspense tend to keep our brains cognitively stimulated for longer periods of time. Before I know it, I’m reciting a commentary of my own, blurting out a string of expletives: “OMG,” “How did I not see that coming?” “No way,” “I knew it!”—which is exactly why the libraries and I never mix well, especially when I’m reading thrillers.
Lastly, I find that the most disturbing yet fascinating part of McFadden’s novels isn’t about learning who lied but realizing that you believed the wrong person the whole time. After all, there’s nothing worse than realizing that your intuition was completely off, and suddenly you have trust issues, not just in real life, but with fictional characters too. McFadden’s novels hit me with the realization of how we often tend to judge people at a superficial level and jump to conclusions too quickly. She reminds us of how nothing is always as it seems and that no one is usually who they appear to be.