Books Like The Housemaid: What to Read Next, Depending on What Hooked You
Freida McFadden’s thriller started out as an ebook and ended up as a box-office hit. If you’ve turned the last page and want that feeling again, start by working out what drew you in.
Few thrillers have had a stranger route to fame than The Housemaid. Freida McFadden’s novel was published in 2022 by Bookouture, a digital-first publisher. It spread by word of mouth, was picked up in print later that year, and eventually reached the screen, with Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried in Paul Feig’s adaptation. The film passed $300 million worldwide, and a sequel is now in development.
If you want more of Millie, McFadden has already written two follow-ups, The Housemaid’s Secret and The Housemaid Is Watching. This list is for afterwards — or for readers who want the same jolt from a different writer.
The novel works on several levels at once. It is a story about a house, about a marriage, about a perspective that suddenly turns, and about a young woman whom everyone underestimates. Most readers have a favourite among those. So rather than one long list of books like The Housemaid, the picks below are grouped by what you might be hoping to find again.
If the house itself unsettled you
The Turn of the Key — Ruth Ware (2019)
Rowan answers an advert for a live-in nanny in the Scottish Highlands, at a salary that seems too generous to be real. The house, Heatherbrae, is a Victorian building fitted out as a smart home, with cameras in the rooms and an app that controls the lights, the music and the doors. The novel is told as a series of letters Rowan writes from prison, where she is awaiting trial over the death of a child in her care.
Read this if you loved… the moment Millie notices the lock on the outside of her door. Ware takes that sense of being watched in someone else’s home and turns it up.
Worth knowing: It is slower and more gothic than McFadden, with a nod to Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The letter format means you are always reading Rowan’s version of events.
For more reading inspiration as the evenings draw in, take a look at our selection of “Books to Read this Autumn That Will Keep You Awake”.
Rebecca — Daphne du Maurier (1938)
A shy young woman marries a wealthy widower after a whirlwind courtship and goes to live at Manderley, his estate on the Cornish coast. There she finds herself measured against his first wife, Rebecca, whose presence still fills the house. That presence is kept alive above all by Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper.
Read this if you loved… the feeling of being an outsider in a grand house, and the slow suspicion that the people in charge are not telling you the truth.
Worth knowing: This is the classic many modern domestic thrillers draw on, and it reads like one. The pace is unhurried and atmospheric — something to savour rather than race through in a night.
If Rebecca makes you want to explore more older fiction, our guide to “8 Classic Books That Will Make You Fall in Love With Reading” offers a few places to start.
If it was the marriage that chilled you
Behind Closed Doors — B.A. Paris (2016)
To their friends, Jack and Grace Angel are the perfect couple: a charming lawyer and his elegant wife in a beautiful English home. Behind the front door, the picture is very different. The novel moves between the present and the story of how Grace got here, while the clock runs down on a threat to her younger sister.
Read this if you loved… the moment The Housemaid revealed what can hide inside a seemingly perfect marriage.
Worth knowing: It is claustrophobic and, at times, harrowing reading about psychological and physical abuse. Some critics found Jack too much of a pantomime villain, but its premise is the closest on this list to McFadden’s.
Gone Girl — Gillian Flynn (2012)
On their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Dunne disappears and her husband, Nick, becomes the obvious suspect. Nick’s chapters alternate with entries from Amy’s diary, and the two accounts of the marriage don’t sit comfortably together.
Read this if you loved… the question of who is really the villain in a marriage, and a narrator you are never quite sure you can trust.
Worth knowing: It is the obvious choice, and you may have read it already. If you haven’t, it is the template for much of what came after, The Housemaid included. Flynn’s prose is sharper and more cynical than McFadden’s.
If you lived for the switch
The Last Mrs. Parrish — Liv Constantine (2017)
Amber Patterson is tired of having nothing. Daphne Parrish, wealthy and seemingly serene in a Long Island Sound town, has everything — including a handsome husband, Jackson. Amber sets out to befriend Daphne, and then to replace her. Liv Constantine is the pen name of two sisters, Lynne and Valerie Constantine, writing together.
Read this if you loved… the structure of The Housemaid: one woman’s view of a glamorous household, followed by a change of perspective that makes you reconsider everything before it.
Worth knowing: It takes longer to get going than McFadden’s book, and some reviewers note that its plot echoes Behind Closed Doors. Read one, wait a while, then read the other.
Verity — Colleen Hoover (2018)
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer who is hired to finish a bestselling series for Verity Crawford, an author left unable to work after an accident. While going through Verity’s papers in the family’s home, Lowen finds an unfinished autobiography that was never meant to be read.
Read this if you loved… an outsider moving into a damaged household, and a document that changes how you read every character.
Worth knowing: McFadden’s publisher already compares The Housemaid to Verity. But Hoover’s book is far more explicit, both sexually and in its violence, and its content warnings include harm to children. Check that before you buy it for a book club.
If you were rooting for the woman with the mop
Count My Lies — Sophie Stava (2025)
Sloane Caraway tells lies, mostly small ones, to make her life seem more interesting. One afternoon in a park, she claims to be a nurse to help a stranger’s daughter. That lie gets her a job as nanny to Jay and Violet Lockhart, a wealthy New York couple with a brownstone, a daughter in private school and summers on Block Island.
Read this if you loved… the tension between the hired help and the family who employ her — this time with the help as the one hiding things.
Worth knowing: It is a debut, and recent enough to be absent from many older lists. Reviewers have praised its pace while questioning some of its later plausibility, so treat it as a lighter, more mischievous read.
The Maid — Nita Prose (2022)
Molly Gray loves her job as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, where she takes pleasure in returning rooms to perfect order. When she finds a wealthy guest dead in his suite, her unusual manner makes her the prime suspect.
Read this if you loved… watching a cleaner whom others dismiss turn out to see more than anyone else in the building.
Worth knowing: This is a cosy mystery rather than a psychological thriller: warmer, gentler and with far less violence. It suits readers who loved Millie but found The Housemaid‘s darker scenes hard going.
Lullaby — Leïla Slimani (2016; published in the US as The Perfect Nanny)
A Parisian couple, Myriam and Paul, hire Louise to look after their children so that Myriam can return to work as a lawyer. Louise seems ideal. The novel tells you on its first page how this ends; the rest is spent showing how it came to that.
Read this if you loved… the class tension at the heart of The Housemaid: what it means to depend on someone who lives inside your home but outside your world.
Worth knowing: It won the Prix Goncourt, France’s leading literary prize, in 2016, and it is literary fiction rather than a twist-driven thriller. It is short, bleak and deeply unsettling, so choose it when you want something to think about rather than something to escape into.
So, which one next?
If you want the same rush, read The Last Mrs. Parrish or Behind Closed Doors. If you want more fear and atmosphere, choose The Turn of the Key or Rebecca. If you would like something lighter, try The Maid. And if The Housemaid left you thinking about money, power and who cleans up after whom, Lullaby is the one that will stay with you longest.
A final note: several of these books deal with domestic abuse, violence or harm to children. It is worth checking content notes before you begin, particularly with Verity and Lullaby.
