Tag: freida mcfadden

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – The Divorce (Freida McFadden)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies!

You guys must be shocked to see another one of Freida McFadden’s books in my reviews again! She is on my list as one of my favorite writers to read! Out of all the thrillers that I’ve read, hers has so many twists and turns that you didn’t even expect to happen.

The story starts out by following Naomi, who is married to Jeremy, and they have a son, Teddy. Naomi thinks that everything is fine and well until her husband throws her out and takes custody of their son. Of course, this poor woman is sideswiped because she thought they were happy.

Instead, her husband wants to file for divorce and take custody of Teddy. Then Naomi finds out there is another woman he has been seeing, Veronica, or “Ronnie”, who is younger than her, that Jeremy has been seeing.

Naomi also doesn’t want to go through with the divorce because of the fact that she thinks there is a chance to save their marriage and thinks that Jeremy is going through a midlife crisis. However, Jeremy wants nothing to do with fixing the marriage and insists on the divorce, as well as pushing for her to get a lawyer so they can start the process.

When she goes out to find the best lawyer, Jeremy has already taken away most of her options. She also has no money, as she was a stay-at-home mom before all this happened, so her options are pretty slim.

I honestly was feeling bad for Naomi! Gets kicked out of her house, only gets her son part-time on the weekends, and now has to start all over by getting a job again, just to get back on her feet. Plus, while all this is happening, strange things keep happening at the new place she is living at, and she is thinking it was the new girlfriend that Jeremy is seeing again.

At first, I was on Naomi’s side, but then the book switches to Ronnie’s POV and talks about how she was struggling with drugs, but decided to get clean once she found out she was pregnant. Then, once she has her son, she ends up losing him because her boyfriend ended up doing drugs and passed out in the car while their son was in the back crying.

You are not going to believe who happened to take this poor little boy out of the car.

Honestly thought if you saw a passed-out dad in the front seat of the car with his screaming infant in the back, wouldn’t you have tried to wake up the dad before just taking the baby? Granted, he was passed out because he was shooting up, but still, I would at least have involved the police or something to that effect.

The crappy thing about this situation is that when Ronnie reported the baby being missing, when her boyfriend came back to the house, the cops didn’t do anything about it because they both had been arrested for drug possession, which I can understand why the cop didn’t make a report about it, but she also didn’t give birth at a hospital so there was no record of her son being born or having a birth cerifitcate.

Without spoiling it with you, I started to side more with Ronnie after that. I wanted Naomi to get what she deserved in the divorce and to have her son full time, but after knowing Ronnie’s side and what she has been through, I felt more for Ronnie than Naomi!

I really couldn’t believe it! I also don’t want to spoil how it ends or what else happens, but it’s like everything you thought you knew in the first part, the second part proves how crazy it really turns out to be. I love every second of it!

Overall, this was another one of her books that kept me on my toes for sure! I know a lot of people that I saw, it was hit or miss, but I’m a newly found reader of hers, so I’ll have to see how her other works are, but I really enjoyed this one!

I also am fairly new to thrillers, and I only started reading her works this year, which I also found out she writes like a few novels a year, which is amazing, and she’s a surgeon? How does she have the time to do both! I wish I was that talented!

Let me know down in the comments if you really liked this one or if you have another favorite/recommendation for me to check out of Freida’s work! I would love to know down below!

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – The Housemaid (Freida McFadden)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies!

I know I said I would be taking a break from thrillers, but I just couldn’t help myself! I actually saw the movie trailer, and when I found out it was a book, I wanted to read it before seeing the movie, especially since it looked really good!

Thankfully, the book series is all on Kindle Unlimited, which was even better! I also got this one recommended; it was more the movie than the book, and normally I don’t do thrillers, but I figured if the book was okay, I could handle the thriller.

Plus, since I read the book before the movie, I can review both and tell you if the movie followed the book. I also did find out the second one is also going to be a movie, so I really need to get started on reading the second one before the movie comes out!

So, before I go any further, I want to put in a spoiler alert because I will be talking about both the book and the movie, and if you really want to read or see the movie before, I highly suggest you do!

The book goes back and forth between Nina and Millie’s POV. Nina is the one who is looking for a housemaid and ends up giving Millie an interview to see if she can hire her for a live-in position to help clean, cook, etc. Nina also has a daughter, Cece, whom she didn’t have with her husband Andrew, but he has pretty much been a father figure for her since she was a baby.

Millie gets hired, and that’s when Nina starts changing from being the happy homemaker to being a bitch to her, telling her the wrong information, and being a complete bitch to her on purpose. Nina also does this stuff in front of Andrew, and he starts to take pity on her.

Little does Nina know that she planned for all of this to happen. She wants out of her marriage because Andrew is an abusive asshole who has been treating her like crap, and if she were to try and leave, he already has evidence against her that he would take her own daughter away from her.

The amount of gaslighting Andrew has done to Nina is insane! As soon as they were married is when the fairytale ended, and his control started to take over. Whenever she does something that he doesn’t like, he locks her up in the room in the attic, and she doesn’t get out until she does what she’s told.

Of course, Millie has no idea of it because he seems like a wonderful husband and father. She starts to fall for him, and they have a night where he takes her out to a show, they have dinner, and of course, they both end up sleeping together.

Which was exactly Nina’s plan. Hire an attractive housemaid, treat her like crap in front of her husband, have them be together alone so they sleep with each other, and then have her husband kick her out and leave her for the housemaid.

So, when Andrew admits that he has feelings for Millie, he ends up kicking Nina out of the house. Thankfully, Cece wasn’t there; she was staying at an overnight camp, so she didn’t see or witness anything. Nina acts upset and angry at both of them and finally leaves, but when she does leave, it’s a breath of fresh air because she’s finally free.

Now, if you were like me, you were probably questioning, “Is Andrew going to do the same things to Millie?”

If you answered yes, you are correct!

However, this part is where details are a little different from the book and movie. In the movie, when Millie gets locked in the attic, it’s because she broke his mother’s china set by accident, and he has her cut herself on the stomach with one of the pieces of china that she broke. In the book, she forgets to put away some of the books she borrowed from his library and makes her hold them on her stomach for 3 hours straight.

I know what you are thinking: history is going to repeat itself, and Millie will now be stuck with the abusive Andrew. Well, Nina had this all figured out because little did Andrew know was that Millie had a criminal record.

When she was younger, she saved a friend of hers from being raped, but ended up killing the guy that she saved her friend from and ended up serving time in jail for it. Nina picked her because she knew that if Andrew did the same things to Millie, she would take him out for her.

Now, the way everything happens at the end of the movie is very different from the book. I think the only reason why they switched it up was to make it more of a “thriller” vibe, plus it got Millie and Nina working against Andrew too, which was a nice touch since he treated both of them like crap. I won’t spoil it by going into details, but all I’ll say is justice was served.

Overall, it was a great read! I loved how sucked into this one, I think I finished this one in two days? Once you started reading, you wanted to know how it ends. I also liked the movie; it’s not for everyone. If you’re not a huge fan of blood or abuse, then I don’t recommend watching it.

If you are like me and have watched true crime or crime shows in general, it’s about the same. The book is a little bit tamer, I feel, so if you’d rather not see all that, then the book might be better for you than the movie.

Honestly, the movie did a great job sticking with the details of the book, other than the end. Plus, the actors did a great job of portraying the characters in the book, as well. I know a lot of people don’t like Sydney Sweeney, but I think she did really well in the movie.

They are making a second movie for the second book as we speak; it won’t be out until December of 2027. This gives me and anyone else time to read the second book before it comes out!

Did you see the movie first? Or did you read the book before the movie was even a thing? Let me know down below what you thought!