The Housemaid's Secret
The Housemaid's Secret
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Freida McFadden on The Housemaid's Secret
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why she wrote it
A twist without a home, and a character she couldn’t leaveMcFadden built a career on standalone thrillers precisely because sequels carry a structural problem she finds hard to ignore: their existence alone tells readers the protagonist survived. By the time she finished The Housemaid, she had every reason to stay away from a second book.
I have been hesitant to write sequels. I kind of feel like it gives away the ending just the existence of a sequel. So in general, I’m not excited to write them. But I felt like I could do this one, just from Millie’s point of view. [paraphrased from audio]
The first book’s success had not been part of her plan. She had shelved the original Housemaid manuscript for years after drafting it in 2019, uncertain it would ever reach readers. When it finally did, the scale of what followed reordered her assumptions about what came next.
I didn’t expect much. I expected, you know, ‘I’m with a publisher now it will do maybe a little better than my other books.’ What actually happened was really so far beyond my wildest expectations.
Even accounting for that surprise, the deciding factor was not commercial. Millie Calloway, the housemaid at the center of both books, had become something McFadden wasn’t ready to set aside.
I felt so close to Millie and her character, and I wasn’t quite ready to let go of it.
There was also a practical creative reason the sequel became possible when it did. She had been carrying a central twist for years without a story that could contain it. The second Housemaid gave that idea exactly the shape it needed.
She said the central twist for the book had been sitting in her head for years without the full picture around it, and that when she decided to write a second Housemaid, she realized it fit perfectly. She called finding that fit “awesome.” [paraphrased from audio]
How she wrote it
Long walks, a landscaper who took over, and a new address for MillieMcFadden produces multiple books a year, and readers often ask how. The answer is not that she writes fast from the start. She front-loads the work in a form that leaves no visible trace on the page.
I spend a lot of time planning the book in my head and the physical writing is quick.
Enzo, the landscaper who appears briefly in the first book, was never meant to be more than a background figure. Once McFadden was actually writing him in the sequel, something shifted, and she followed it.
She said she definitely didn’t expect Enzo to become as central a character as he did. Once she started writing him, she found him genuinely interesting, and he became a fan favorite. She took that reader response as confirmation that her enthusiasm had made it to the page. [paraphrased from audio]
That connection between her own enthusiasm and what readers feel is something she has observed consistently across her books, not just with Enzo.
Whenever I love a character, everybody feels it with me. I always notice that in the reviews. [paraphrased from audio]
The sequel moves Millie from the Long Island setting of the first book to a Manhattan penthouse, a deliberate choice to give the new story its own atmosphere rather than retread familiar geography. A different address, a different class register, a different kind of trap.
Writing the sequel also required McFadden to solve a structural problem she had flagged as her usual objection to second books: how to continue Millie’s story without the book’s existence spoiling what came before.
I usually don’t like to do it, because I feel like it’s usually a spoiler. But I felt like in this case, I could write it without it being a spoiler. I could just like set it as a continuation of Millie’s story.
On what the book is wrestling with
Justice that life withholds and fiction can giveMillie Calloway enters the Garrick household in The Housemaid’s Secret certain she knows who needs protecting. The book’s tension turns on how badly she has misread the situation. McFadden places that misreading inside a larger argument she returns to across her work.
My general feeling is that in life, people rarely get exactly what they deserve. But in art, you can dole out that poetic justice.
Millie is not a straightforward hero, and McFadden designed her that way. Readers occasionally push back on her female protagonists for making choices that seem self-destructive or morally compromised. McFadden does not treat that as a problem to fix.
I love writing morally grey characters. I’m intrigued by the idea that a person can be good deep down but still do bad things. Or a person can be mostly ‘evil’ yet still have sympathetic qualities. Someone who does nothing but good things is not interesting to read about, in my opinion!
The corollary to moral complexity is that characters who behave perfectly are not only less interesting but structurally disqualifying. Mess is the engine.
If they made only good decisions, the story would probably be over within twenty pages!
The twist McFadden had been storing for years had to meet a specific test before she would use it. Surprise alone was not enough. She applies a two-part standard that most thriller reveals, by her own assessment, fail to clear.
I think it’s not enough for the killer to be the person you’d least suspect. It has to be someone that didn’t even cross your mind for a millisecond. And yet, at the same time, it also has to be someone that is meaningful.
What she wants us to sit with
Invisible until it lands, then impossible to unseeThe standard McFadden sets for her twists is also a standard she sets for her own reading. A reveal that merely surprises fades. One that reorders everything the reader thought they understood stays. She builds toward the second kind deliberately, and her two-part test is the measure she uses to know when she’s there.
I think it’s not enough for the killer to be the person you’d least suspect. It has to be someone that didn’t even cross your mind for a millisecond. And yet, at the same time, it also has to be someone that is meaningful.
Running beneath the thriller mechanics is a conviction about what fiction can do that real life cannot. The Garrick household in The Housemaid’s Secret is built around wealth, coercion, and a power imbalance that in the real world often goes uncorrected. McFadden uses the novel to correct it.
My general feeling is that in life, people rarely get exactly what they deserve. But in art, you can dole out that poetic justice.
Millie ends the book having been wrong about almost everything she walked in believing. What she gets right, and what it costs her, is the question McFadden wants readers to carry out of the room.