Book-to-movie adaptations are being released at a rapid pace. With BookTok novels earning global attention online, the popular stories are easy to feature on the big screen, but with the craze at an all-time high, one could question: how are these stories being chosen, and what do these choices reveal about their perceived audience? BookTok favorite The Housemaid found its way to the big screen in December 2025. Its adaptation revealed the motive behind the BookTok movie trend and the unfair perception of the BookTok community.
Frieda McFadden’s novel The Housemaid was released on April 22, 2022. It found instant popularity on Booktok, quickly finding a home with the book reviewers and catalogers who call TikTok home. The story follows Millie Calloway, a jaded young woman who works as a housemaid for a wealthy family with secrets to be uncovered. The popularity of the psychological thriller brought attention to the rest of McFadden’s catalogue. Now, just four years later, McFadden owns the thriller genre on TikTok, as every one of her books seems to be a successful hit under the #Booktok tag.
The Housemaid, in all its popularity, has over 3 million reviews on the book-tracking app, Goodreads. So, when it was announced that it would become a motion picture, the world was excited. It fell right into the trend of BookTok books coming to life on the big screen. With these popular stories having pre-established fanbases and attention, they are almost guaranteed success at the box office, as actors can bring the story to life for audiences. While these movies tend to achieve commercial success, many feel that the representation of these stories and their female characters is problematic; a scary fact, considering the audience of these movies, BookTok, is majority female. The Housemaid is already viewed by the community as melodramatic and “trashy,” making it an interesting choice for a movie.
Why are women seen as only reading dirty, mindless BookTok books, and how did The Housemaid become another dirty BookTok movie? BookTok is home to diverse readers. From thought-provoking contemporary fiction to beautiful historical fiction, there’s more versatility offered than people suggest. A major reason BookTok receives such a bad representation is that the books made into movies fit into this “trashy” stereotype, leaving out the hundreds of quality books BookTok gives a platform to. Take the adaptations of two of Colleen Hoover’s books, for example. Even though she was canceled for her inappropriate glorification of toxic, sometimes abusive relationships, her books made it into the movie market. BookTok had long ago banished Hoover, but her books still became movies. This allowed her gross portrayal of romantic relationships to live on, as well as the stereotyping of BookTok readers, because these book adaptation movies have their origins there. Their fame outshines the BookTok books that don’t subscribe to these relationship archetypes.
These stories aren’t inherently bad. In fact, the basic outline of The Housemaid is unique, as it follows a powerful woman’s journey full of jaw-dropping twists and turns. The idea it represents, women fighting back against being the perfect housemaid, is an entertaining yet complex concept. But the casting of Sydney Sweeney and the character she plays makes this movie sexual in a way that is demeaning to women and the BookTok community. She was cast to make the story sexual, thinking that would reel in the female BookTok audience.
Romance is not a selling point of this novel, yet it is snuck in as if women need romance to be included in a movie for it to be interesting. What else do women love? Drama, of course! The movie becomes so dramatized and the plot so ridiculous that the horror elements almost completely lose their scary punch. Another choice that can be seen as minimizing for the majority female audience.
As a BookTok member and lover of all things books, it upsets me that the reading community is being portrayed this way. The BookTok community, specifically the women who use it, is capable of reading and enjoying things outside of the romance genre. They don’t only read guilty pleasure books. They read a diverse array of genres and tropes. I hope that is remembered, even if the books that seem to make it out of the BookTok world and into the movie theaters are bad representations of all BookTok has to offer.