| What you loved | Best match | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Dual unreliable narrators | Gone Girl | Both narrators lying — the template McFadden follows |
| Perfect family hiding horror | Behind Closed Doors | Locked-room domestic menace, no escape |
| Withheld-until-the-end twist | The Silent Patient | Everything recontextualised on the final pages |
| Continue the series | The Housemaid's Secret | Millie's story continues — read in order |
| Locked-room employer thriller | The Turn of the Key | Live-in nanny, sinister smart house, no one to trust |
Continue the Series First
The Housemaid's Secret — Freida McFadden (2023)
Millie is now working as a housekeeper for a seemingly normal couple — until she realises something is very wrong. McFadden ratchets the tension even tighter than book one; knowing who Millie really is from the first book makes every chapter more charged. Read The Housemaid first — the sequel's reveals depend on it.
Check price on Amazon →The Closest Matches
Behind Closed Doors — B.A. Paris (2016)
Jack and Grace Angel appear to be the perfect couple. Jack is a criminal barrister who defends domestic abuse victims; Grace is beautiful and devoted. What goes on behind their closed door is the novel. Paris reveals the horror in slow layers — you know from chapter one that something is catastrophically wrong, and the novel's job is showing you exactly how wrong. More relentless than McFadden and with no comedy — pure dread from first page to last.
Check price on Amazon →Gone Girl — Gillian Flynn (2012)
Nick Dunne's wife disappears on their anniversary. Two narrators, both lying, both calculating. Flynn invented the dual-unreliable-narrator domestic thriller that McFadden perfected — The Housemaid would not exist without Gone Girl. If you haven't read it, do so immediately. Sharp Objects and Dark Places are equally dark, equally good follow-ups.
Check price on Amazon →The Silent Patient — Alex Michaelides (2019)
Alicia Berenson shot her husband five times and hasn't spoken since. Therapist Theo Faber becomes obsessed with understanding why. Michaelides builds the whole novel toward a single revelation that recontextualises 300 pages of reading — the same structure McFadden uses. The best debut thriller of its decade.
Check price on Amazon →The Turn of the Key — Ruth Ware (2019)
A nanny answers an advert for a position in a stunning Scottish smart-house. The pay is extraordinary. The previous nannies all left under strange circumstances. Ware takes the live-in-domestic-employee setup of The Housemaid and adds a gothic smart-home angle — every light, lock, and camera controlled by an app the family can access remotely. One of the best executions of a locked-room thriller in recent fiction.
Check price on Amazon →The Woman in the Window — A.J. Finn (2018)
Agoraphobic Anna Fox watches her neighbours from her Manhattan apartment — and sees something she can't unsee. No one believes her. Finn's homage to Rear Window and Rebecca uses the same unreliable narrator trick as McFadden: the reader can't be sure what Anna really saw, or whether she's a trustworthy witness to her own story.
Check price on Amazon →McFadden's novels work because she gives two narrators genuinely incompatible versions of reality and delays the resolution long enough to make both plausible. The reader becomes complicit in judging which woman to believe — which is exactly the question domestic abuse situations force on everyone around them. The twist reframes that complicity.
More Domestic Noir — The Best of the Subgenre
Big Little Lies — Liane Moriarty (2014)
Three women in a wealthy school community converge on a murder at a school fundraiser. Moriarty is lighter than McFadden — genuine comedy alongside real darkness — but the domestic menace and the hidden abuse are treated with equal honesty. The HBO adaptation with Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, and Meryl Streep is among the best TV thrillers ever made.
Check price on Amazon →Then She Was Gone — Lisa Jewell (2017)
A mother whose teenage daughter disappeared ten years ago meets a man whose own daughter looks exactly like her missing child. Jewell is the most consistent name in this genre — every chapter reveals a little, withholds a little more, and the revelation about what happened to Ellie is properly shocking. The Family Upstairs and I Found You are equally excellent.
Check price on Amazon →The Guest List — Lucy Foley (2020)
A wedding on a remote Irish island. Someone ends up dead. Multiple narrators, all hiding something. Foley excels at the slow poisoning of a social gathering — the way a group of people who look fine gradually reveal their damage. The Hunting Party is her earlier novel and equally compulsive.
Check price on Amazon →Verity — Colleen Hoover (2018)
A writer finds a manuscript in a bestselling author's home that appears to confess to the murders of her children. Not a domestic thriller in the McFadden mould, but the same compulsive structure — an unreliable account, a woman trapped in someone else's house, a twist the reader argues about for days. The most recommended cross-genre pick for Housemaid fans.
Check price on Amazon →The Last Mrs. Parrish — Liv Constantine (2017)
Amber Patterson systematically insinuates herself into the life of Daphne Parrish to steal her perfect husband and perfect life. The first half is Amber's cold, calculating perspective; the second half reveals what she didn't know. Constantine's novel is the most direct McFadden equivalent in structure — two women, one house, one man, incompatible accounts.
Check price on Amazon →Sharp Objects — Gillian Flynn (2006)
A journalist returns to her Missouri hometown to cover the murders of two girls and confronts a mother who may be far more sinister than she appears. Flynn's debut is darker and more literary than The Housemaid — less plot-thriller, more character study — but the mother-daughter dynamic and the question of which woman is the real predator maps directly onto McFadden's employer/employee relationship.
Check price on Amazon →Frequently Asked Questions
How many Housemaid books are there?
Three as of 2026: The Housemaid (2022), The Housemaid's Secret (2023), and The Housemaid's Baby (2024). All follow Millie and should be read in publication order for maximum impact. McFadden has not announced a fourth book.
Is The Housemaid appropriate for book clubs?
Excellent book club choice. The novel generates genuine disagreement about which narrator to believe at each stage, and the twist prompts a re-read of early chapters to catch planted clues. Discussion questions: Who did you trust first? When did you change your mind? What does the novel say about how we judge women based on appearance and manner?