The Tenant

The Tenant (2025) is a psychological thriller novel by Freida McFadden. McFadden is the author of over 25 novels, most of which are suspense and psychological thriller novels. Although she self-published her first several works, she gained fame in 2022 with her novel The Housemaid and its two sequels, The Housemaid’s Secret (2023) and The Housemaid is Watching (2024), all of which were international bestsellers. As a practicing physician who specializes in neurology, McFadden’s works often explore human psychology and the impact of fear, trauma, and betrayal. In The Tenant, McFadden explores themes of The Hollow Signs of Success, The Importance of Human Connection, and The Gap Between Perception and Reality.

This guide uses the 2025 first paperback edition of the novel, published by Poisoned Pen Press.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of suicidal ideation, animal cruelty, animal death, sexual content, cursing, emotional abuse, graphic violence, illness, and death.

Plot Summary

Blake Porter works for a marketing firm in Manhattan. He has just been promoted to Vice President, which has put strain on his relationship with his fiancée Krista Marshall. However, he is adamant that he wants to have a better life than his father gave him, and he has been working tirelessly to move up in his company over the last decade. With his advancement, he bought a brownstone in Manhattan and an extravagant engagement ring for Krista.

At the end of his workday, Blake is called into his boss Wayne’s office. Wayne accuses him of taking information about their clients and selling it to their competitors. He fires Blake without giving him a chance to defend himself.

Over the next couple of months, Blake struggles to find a job, as Wayne has blackballed him within the marketing community. Eventually, he runs out of money to pay his mortgage. Krista suggests getting a tenant for their guest room or selling her engagement ring. Although he is hesitant to do so, Blake agrees to a tenant, feeling it is the better of the two options.

Blake and Krista interview several people to rent their room, and all of them are bad. One woman in particular, Quillizabeth, insists that she is a psychic. She tells Krista that Blake is going to kill her in their home, frightening Krista. However, after a few days, they find a woman named Whitney Cross. She is kind and friendly and works at a diner near their home. She offers to pay her rent and deposit upfront, so Blake and Krista agree.

After Whitney moves in, Blake finds a new job. It is only a temporary entry-level marketing job, forcing Blake to do menial tasks like taking notes in meetings and getting coffee for his bosses; however, he is optimistic that he can work his way up in the company. Meanwhile, things start well with Whitney, as they bond while watching television late at night. Blake realizes that he is sexually attracted to her, and he thinks she is flirting with him, but he is adamant that he is loyal to Krista.

On the morning of Blake’s first day of work, he is frustrated to discover that Whitney has eaten all his cereal and used his bathroom products. He has also started to notice that he is developing a rash underneath his clothes and that fruit flies are appearing more and more frequently in the kitchen.

After work, Blake decides to stop at the diner to confront Whitney. Although he tries to be amicable, she immediately gets defensive, insisting that Blake said it was okay for her to use his things. However, when Blake stresses that they are tenant and landlord, not friends, she grows angry, and Blake realizes that he made a mistake by confronting her at work. After that, their relationship worsens, with Whitney acting cold and distant toward him.

As time goes on, Blake realizes that someone is messing with their home. He discovers that the laundry detergent is irritating his skin, as he is allergic to normal soap. He also finds several rotten apples in a bag in the cupboard and rotten food in the fridge, attracting hundreds of fruit flies. Late at night, he constantly hears thumping sounds coming from upstairs, but when he confronts Whitney about them, she insists that she is not doing anything. Ultimately, Blake ends up blaming Whitney for everything, believing that she is intentionally ruining his life. He begins to wonder if she somehow orchestrated her moving in because she has a vendetta against him from their past.

As Blake becomes more and more paranoid, Krista becomes more and more distant. She finds lipstick on Blake’s shirt and questions why he is constantly moving around the house in the middle of the night. When their goldfish dies, she finds bleach in his closet and blames him for intentionally killing their fish. Eventually, she moves out, insisting that she needs space so that Blake can get over his obsession with Whitney.

After Krista leaves, Blake gets in a fight with his neighbor, Mr. Zimmerly, over trash cans. He violently throws one toward Mr. Zimmerly and then storms back inside. A few days later, when Mr. Zimmerly does not move his own cans, Blake investigates and finds Mr. Zimmerly dead inside his home. When the police question him, they tell Blake that Mr. Zimmerly was murdered. Devastated, Blake begins to question whether Whitney could be responsible.

Blake decides to investigate Whitney’s past. He calls her old school, and the secretary tells him that she is dangerous. When she was in high school, her boyfriend, Jordan Gallo, cheated on her. His life then fell apart, ending in his alleged death by suicide. Before the police could investigate Whitney, she disappeared and was never heard from again.

Blake then drives to New Jersey to visit Whitney’s home. He meets her mother, who insists that Whitney is dangerous. However, when he checks their family photos, he realizes that his tenant is not Whitney. Instead, he sees his wife in the photos. He goes back to his car and checks his pocket, finding a suicide note written by someone else. He also realizes that he was just eating cookies given to him by Krista. He questions whether Krista is the one who has been messing up his life while hiding her true identity from him.

The narrative then shifts to Krista’s perspective. Over the last eight months, she has orchestrated everything to ruin Blake’s life after finding out that he cheated on her with an administrative assistant at his old job. She also discovered that Whitney—whose real name is Amanda—stole her identity. She got Blake fired from his job and arranged for Amanda to get kicked out of her apartment, bringing her into their spare bedroom so that Krista could get revenge on both of them.

Krista plans to kill Amanda and pin it on Blake. She kills Mr. Zimmerly using a clock from their home with Blake’s fingerprints on it, then begins to poison Blake with something that will kill him slowly. On the day Blake goes to visit Whitney’s home, Krista waits for Blake to return.

As Blake gets back home, the effects of the poison overtake him. He barely manages to get to the front door and rings the bell just as Krista, inside, stabs Amanda. Krista lets Blake in, and he insists that he still loves her, but she ignores him, planning to watch him die. However, Amanda stabs Krista from behind. Watching her die, Blake sobs, realizing that he will always love her, no matter what she does.

Four months later, Blake has recovered from the poison. He and Amanda have grown close, bonding over their trauma. They both make money from the media when Krista becomes famous for the handful of murders that she committed. Blake sells his brownstone and moves home to Cleveland to take over his father’s business, promising to help Amanda financially if she ever needs it.

After Blake is gone, Amanda thinks of how good of a person he is. She feels somewhat guilty that he has befriended her, as she has lied about her past. She claimed that she used a loan shark to pay for her mother’s cancer treatment; in reality, it was because of her gambling debts. However, after she started using Whitney’s name, a man named Frank Gallo found her. He told her that if she killed Krista—as revenge for his nephew Jordan’s death in high school—he would take care of her gambling debt. Amanda willingly did so, giving herself a chance to start over.