In many of my book groups. Freida McFadden has become a big name. I’ve discovered a number of authors I like through these groups, so I decided to listen to the audiobook of one of her very popular books, The Housemaid. Everyone praised the story as a terrific psychological thriller with an amazing twist they did not see coming.

Well, I saw it coming. I figured it out long before it came out. That’s not to say the story isn’t entertaining. I just don’t have the same impression of it that others do. Perhaps that’s because I have been reading books like this for fifty years now. With the experience of seeing twists and turns in stories over all those years, I could see the signs of what was coming.

The Housemaid is told from two perspectives. The first half is told by Millie. She’s made some mistakes in life that ended with her in prison. Upon release, she’s dealt with the normal problems that prisoners face when trying to hold a decent job. She lands on the doorstep of the Winchester home. It’s a job that should be out of her reach, especially if the wife, Nina, does a background check. Yet, she finds herself hired on as a housemaid/mother’s helper. It’s a live-in position, and Millie has a room in the attic of the home.

The dynamics in the home are strange. Nina runs the house but seems to be suffering from mental illness. This is confirmed when Millie learns Nina was confined to a mental hospital for attempting to drown her daughter. Nina seems to be doing everything to make Millie’s job harder. Millie would like to leave, but jobs like this are hard for convicts to get. Only Andrew Winchester seems to be sympathetic to what Millie is enduring.

The second half of the book is told by Nina. I won’t spoil it, but by then I knew what was going on long before Nina filled me in. Still, I found the book to be very well written and kept me on the edge of my seat as to how it would resolve. McFadden does a great job creating compelling and sympathetic characters. Both of the female leads are well-defined and strong in very different ways. Life hasn’t exactly been fair to either of them, but they are trying to navigate it as best they can. That said, Nina definitely has the upper hand. She knows what the plan is from the beginning, whereas Millie has to catch up later on. Millie has more of what we call “street smarts,” though, and this will be to her benefit in the long run.

There are a number of coincidences that feel forced, especially when the police arrive on the scene near the end of the book. I do believe that money can get you out of almost anything (aren’t we seeing that right now with the Epstein files?) Eventually, though, it only does so much. You never know when you are messing with someone who can outmaneuver you.

The audiobook is narrated by Lauryn Allman, who does a great job. She doesn’t go overboard trying to distinguish the characters, which made it easy to follow the story as if I were reading it, rather than having it acted out for me. She does inject some emotion into the conversations that happen between characters, which works without steering the listener in a certain direction.

While I wouldn’t say The Housemaid was quite the thriller others have reviewed it as, it was a good book. I enjoyed the twists and turns, even the ones I knew were coming. The characters were interesting, and the pace of the book was nearly perfect. Revelations happen at different times that keep readers in the dark, then comes the understanding. I rounded it up to four stars from 3.5, as I wasn’t that surprised by the story as others have said they were.