6 books like The Housemaid by Freida McFadden, from Behind Closed Doors to The Perfect Nanny: domestic thrillers where the help sees what the marriage hides.
Updated June 10, 2026
The Housemaid is the book that turned Freida McFadden into a fixture of every thriller bestseller list, and its formula is easy to state and hard to execute: a woman with a past she is hiding (Millie, fresh out of prison) takes a live-in job with a wealthy family, the wife seems unstable, the husband seems kind, and a locked attic room sits over everything. Then McFadden flips the board. The midpoint perspective switch reframes who is the victim and who is the predator, and the short chapters and constant cliffhangers make the whole thing readable in a day or two. It now anchors a series, with The Housemaid's Secret and The Housemaid Is Watching following Millie onward.
The list below is organized around the two things readers want next. If it was the employee-inside-a-rich-household setup, the outsider watching a family rot from the inside, go to The Perfect Nanny and Big Little Lies. If it was the marriage that is not what it appears and the rug-pull reveals, go to Behind Closed Doors, The Wife Between Us, and The Guest List. One title, Daniel Silva's The Other Woman, is an espionage novel that does not really belong in this company, and its entry below is honest about that.
A practical note on expectations: McFadden writes fast, plot-first commercial thrillers, and the closest matches here (Behind Closed Doors, The Wife Between Us) read the same way. The Perfect Nanny is the one literary pick, slower and colder, and it earns its place through subject rather than pacing. Match your choice to whether you want another binge or something that lingers.
Read this if the perspective flip in The Housemaid was your favorite trick.
Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen built this novel on the same engineering that powers The Housemaid: let the reader settle into one version of who the women in a rich man's life are, then yank it away. It opens as what looks like a jealous ex-wife stalking her glamorous young replacement, and the structural reveal partway through rewrites every assumption, exactly the move McFadden makes when the Winchester household turns inside out. Both books also share the deeper idea that the woman everyone dismisses as unstable may be the one who understands the situation best.
It is a more polished, more deliberate book than The Housemaid, with longer chapters and a slower wind-up before the trap springs, so binge readers may find the first third patient by comparison. There is no Millie figure, no class divide, and no locked room; the battlefield is entirely the marriage itself. Pick it when the twist mechanics are what you are chasing, and resist the urge to skim, because the early chapters are built to mislead careful readers, not careless ones.
Read this for the most suffocating perfect-marriage-with-a-monster book in the genre.
B.A. Paris's debut is the purest version of what The Housemaid is about underneath the twists: a marriage that functions as a cage, run by a man whose public charm is part of the machinery. Jack and Grace Angel give flawless dinner parties; the alternating past and present chapters reveal what Grace's life actually is and how completely Jack has engineered it. Readers who felt the dread of the Winchester house, the sense that the doors only lock from one side, will recognize the same atmosphere here at higher pressure.
The difference is that Paris shows her hand early. There is no midpoint reversal and no mystery about who the villain is; the suspense is purely whether and how Grace can escape, which makes it more relentless and less playful than McFadden. There is also no outsider character like Millie to root for, just the wife and the trap. Choose it when you want The Housemaid's darkness straight, in one sitting, and do not mind a book that never lets you exhale.
Read this only if you also like spy fiction, because it is not a domestic thriller.
Fair warning: this one is mislabeled company. Daniel Silva's The Other Woman is the eighteenth Gabriel Allon novel, an espionage thriller about the hunt for a Russian mole at the heart of Western intelligence, with roots running back to the real Kim Philby betrayal. What it shares with The Housemaid is general rather than specific: a long-buried secret about who someone really is, a woman keeping a hidden written account, and the slow exposure of a deception that has been running for years.
There is no marriage under the microscope, no household, and no domestic suspense at all; the settings are safe houses, intelligence services, and European capitals. Silva is an excellent craftsman and the book stands alone well enough despite its series number, but if you came here for another Housemaid, choose Behind Closed Doors or The Wife Between Us instead. Take this one only if you are in the mood to switch genres entirely.
Read this if you want the employee-in-the-household premise taken deadly seriously.
Leila Slimani's novel (published as Lullaby in the UK, originally Chanson douce in French) is the closest match on this list for The Housemaid's core situation: a woman is hired into a family's home and intimacy, dependence, and resentment build between employer and employee until something breaks. Louise, the nanny, becomes indispensable to a Parisian couple, and Slimani is acute about the same class dynamics McFadden plays with, the way the family needs Louise and condescends to her at once. It won the Prix Goncourt, France's biggest literary prize.
Be clear about what it is, though: this is literary fiction, not a twisty thriller, and it tells you the worst thing on the first page, then spends the book explaining how everyone got there. There is no Millie-style reversal and no satisfying comeuppance, just a cold, forensic unraveling that lingers longer than any plot twist. Pick it when you want the premise elevated rather than repeated; skip it if you read The Housemaid mainly for the cliffhangers.
Read this if you want secrets and a body in a glamorous, closed setting.
Lucy Foley's wedding thriller shares The Housemaid's love of glamour with rot underneath. A magazine-perfect couple marries on a remote island off the Irish coast, the narration rotates through guests and staff (the wedding planner among them, another worker watching the wealthy at close range), and someone ends up dead. Like McFadden, Foley withholds key information, in this case both victim and killer, and doles out reveals in short, propulsive chapters that make the book easy to finish in a weekend.
It is a whodunit in structure where The Housemaid is a domestic trap story, so the energy goes into assembling the puzzle from multiple viewpoints rather than into one woman's escalating predicament. No single narrator carries the book the way Millie does, which costs it some intimacy. Choose it when you want the same compulsive pacing applied to an Agatha Christie-style closed circle rather than a single sinister house.
Read this if you want the dark marriage hidden inside a wittier, warmer book.
Liane Moriarty's novel works the same vein as The Housemaid, the gap between a household's enviable surface and what happens inside it, through three mothers in an Australian beach town and a death at a school trivia night. The storyline about Celeste, whose wealthy, adoring husband is violent behind closed doors, is the direct connection: like Nina Winchester, she is a woman whose money and poise hide the thing no one would believe. Moriarty withholds the victim's identity until the end, so the mystery pull is real.
The tone is the trade-off. Moriarty is funny and humane, interested in friendship, school-gate politics, and motherhood, so the menace arrives between scenes of genuine comedy, and the book is half again as long as a McFadden. There is no employee character and no locked attic, and the pacing is a stroll next to The Housemaid's sprint. Pick it when you want the same secrets with more warmth, or hand it to a reader who finds straight thrillers too grim.
What should I read after The Housemaid by Freida McFadden?
If you have not read McFadden's own sequels, start with The Housemaid's Secret and The Housemaid Is Watching, which continue Millie's story. Beyond the series, Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris is the closest match for the trapped-marriage dread, and The Wife Between Us delivers the same kind of mid-book perspective flip.
Do I need to read The Housemaid books in order?
Yes, ideally. The Housemaid (2022) comes first, then The Housemaid's Secret, then The Housemaid Is Watching, with Millie carrying through the series. Each mystery mostly stands alone, but the sequels openly spoil the first book's twists, so reading out of order ruins the best surprises.
Is The Housemaid being made into a movie?
Yes. A film adaptation has been in the works at Lionsgate with Paul Feig directing, with Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried attached to star as Millie and Nina. Production details and dates have shifted over time, so check current listings for release status.
Which book on this list is most like The Housemaid, and which is least?
Behind Closed Doors is the closest in feel, a fast, dark thriller about a perfect marriage that is actually a prison, and The Perfect Nanny is the closest in premise, with hired help inside a family's home. The least similar is The Other Woman by Daniel Silva, which is a spy novel and belongs on this list only for readers willing to change genres.
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