Summary Of The Housemaid By Freida McFadden: Novel Summary

By Sarah Reads

Please note this is a summary of The Housemaid by Freida Mcfadden. It is not meant in any capacity to replace the original book. 

The Housemaid is a psychological thriller written by the bestselling author Freida Mcfadden. The story follows Millie who struggles to find a job after she gets out of prison. Millie finally lands a job as a housekeeper, working for Nina Winchester, a wealthy woman with mental problems. After several weeks of working for the family, Millie finds herself drawn to Andrew, Nina’s husband, and they start having an affair. Andrew is handsome, kind and sweet, unlike Nina, who’s hard to deal with. Millie starts envisioning a future with him after Nina flees the house, accusing Andrew of abusing her. After Nina leaves, the events take an unexpected turn, leaving Millie in the middle of a mess she has never expected. 

Grab your copy of this chapter-by-chapter summary of The Housemaid to find out more about Millie and Nina, and the shocking end of this amazing thriller. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Feb 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9783755468486

Book preview

Prologue

An unnamed woman is stuck in a house with two police officers and a dead body upstairs. She regrets not leaving the house earlier. Now, her fate rests on how the police interpret her story. The woman claims she found the body upstairs an hour earlier, and despite the tension and the insistence of the detective, the woman sticks to her story. While one of the officers interrogates her about the incident, the other one rushes down the stairs and urges his colleague to join him, as he found something interesting.

Part One: Millie

Chapter One

Three months before the incident, Millie, a job seeker with a difficult past, arrives at the wealthy Nina Winchester’s luxurious house for a housekeeping position interview. Nina Winchester greets Millie and takes her for a tour around the mansion. Nina then takes Millie upstairs to show her where she will stay if she gets the job. It’s a secluded room upstairs. Millie steps into the room and feels uneasy and uncomfortable. While they are discussing the details of the offer, Nina’s daughter, Cecilia appears out of nowhere to say hi. She greets Millie, but she feels the same uneasiness again. Millie thinks there is something unsettling about Cecilia. As Millie is leaving the house, hoping Nina will give her a call soon, she encounters Nina’s landscaper who stares at her without saying a single word. And yet again, Millie feels uneasy and her stomach tightens, a feeling she still can’t explain.

Chapter Two

Millie is living in her car, struggling with unemployment and homelessness. As she is eating her usual sandwich and thinking about how much she hates it and is tired of eating the same thing over and over again, her phone suddenly rings and on the other side of the line, a woman from of Munch Burgers, a fast-food restaurant she had applied to before she interviewed for the housekeeping position at Nina’s house. The woman calls Millie to let her know that the position has been taken and that she hasn’t got the job. A few minutes after she hangs up with that woman, her phone rings again, but this time it’s Nina Winchester. She informs Millie that she wants to work with her and wants her to start work at her house as soon as possible. Nina is excited about the news, but afraid Nina would reveal her past.

Chapter Three

Millie arrives at Nina’s house for her first day at work. She is officially Nina Winchester’s full-time live-in housekeeper. Enzo, Nina’s landscaper, who only speaks Italian, helps Millie open the property’s gate. After she meets Nina and her husband Andrew, she settles in her room upstairs. As she closes the door, Millie notices strange marks on the door and that the door lock is on the outside! She also learns that pericolo means danger in Italian, a word Enzo, the landscaper, tells her when she first arrives. Despite these unsettling discoveries, Millie remains determined to make a good first impression on Nina, who is warm at times and cold and suspicious at others.

Chapter Four