Recap, Summary + Review: The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden

Two-paragraph version: Millie is a housekeeper who has helped many women get out of abusive relationships. Millie gets hired by Wendy for that purpose, to get away from her husband Douglas. When things get ugly, Millie shoots Douglas, and he dies. However, Wendy soon claims to the police that Millie was having an affair with Douglas and shot him because he ended things with her. It’s revealed that Wendy has been having an affair and wanted to leave Douglas, but the pre-nup meant she would get nothing. The man Millie “shot” was actually Wendy’s lover, Russell. But there were blanks in the gun. Instead, Wendy invited the real Douglas over afterwards and shoots him for real, and then framed Millie for it.

Millie reaches out to her ex Enzo and together they figure out what happened. Meanwhile, Wendy finds out Douglas left all his money to charity in his will. Also, he installed a security camera at their place so the police know what really happened. Then, Russell’s wife Marybeth confronts Wendy and Russell. She kills Russell and forces Wendy to give a confession and write a suicide note. She drugs Wendy to force her to overdose on heart medication (which it turns out Millie gave to Marybeth for that purpose). Millie is exonerated and moves in with Enzo.

In Part I, Millie is back to doing housekeeping and is seeing a handsome lawyer named Brock, though he doesn’t know the truth about her past. For a few years, she was doing “housekeeping jobs” where she and her ex Enzo were helping to free women from bad domestic situations, but she stopped doing it after Enzo left to care for his mother in Sicily two years ago. She’s also enrolled in community college to get her degree to pursue a career in social work.

Millie gets fired from a job after the infant gets too attached an starts calling her “mama”. After a few weeks of interviewing, Millie takes a job with Douglas Garrick and his wife Wendy. They have no kids and live in a fancy penthouse apartment. Douglas is the CEO of a company called Coinstock. However, Wendy is unwell and never leaves the guest bedroom.

Millie eventually learns that Douglas got her number from Wendy, and that Wendy got her number from one of the last women she and Enzo helped two years ago. Millie insists on talking to Wendy, and Wendy admits that she wants help getting out of her relationship. They secretly arrange for Wendy to go stay with a friend, but Wendy says that Douglas was there waiting for her when she arrived. Millie is fired.

When Millie goes in for her last day, she hears Douglas choking Wendy. Millie grabs their gun which Wendy had showed her before to scare him into stopping. When he doesn’t stop, she shoots him. He dies. Wendy reassures Millie that she’ll say it was an intruder and wipe the gun and tells Millie to just leave.

Millie is soon questioned for Douglas’s murder. Wendy is now claiming that Douglas and Millie were having an affair and that be ended things, which is why Millie shot him. When the TV stations start reporting on the murder, Millie sees a photo of the real Douglas Garrick and realizes the man that she’s been dealing with and who she shot is someone else.

Meanwhile, Brock breaks up with Millie when he learns about the shooting and the truth about her past. And Millie has recently learned that Enzo is back in town.

Part II. The book switches to Wendy’s point of view. She met Douglas Garrick four years ago with the intent of seducing him, and it was surprisingly easily. Even when they were dating, he irritated her by being sloppy, nerdy and out of shape, but she married him anyway. His best friend insisted on a pre-nup, but it was generous, so that she would still get $10 million in the event of a divorce. Two years into the marriage, she meets Russell, who reminds her of a fitter and more put-together version of Douglas.

She falls in love with him and decides to just divorce Douglas. But Douglas finds out, gathers evidence of her cheating and lets her know that the pre-nup stipulates that she gets nothing if there’s evidence of infidelity. He tells her she can stay in their penthouse for a few months, but then he’s selling it. Knowing that she’d get nothing in a divorce, but everything if Douglas were dead, Wendy eventually starts fantasizing about Douglas’s death. Wendy remembers that her friend once mentioned a “cleaning woman” who had helped other women out and would be willing to do anything if she thought a woman was being abused.

Wendy concocts the plan to make Millie think that Russell is Douglas and that she’s being abused. The night that Millie “shoots” Douglas, it’s really Russell and the gun is filled with blanks. Instead, after Millie leaves, Wendy invites the real Douglas over and she shoots him with the intention of pinning it all on Millie.

In Parts III and IV, Millie reaches out to Enzo for help. Together, they track down the man that Millie thought was Douglas, who is actually Russell, and learn that he is alive and well. They also learn that he has a cabin, which is where they suspect he is staying.

Meanwhile at the cabin, Wendy and Russell are celebrating over wine when Wendy gets a call from Douglas’s lawyer. He says that Douglas actually changed his will a month ago to donate all his assets to charity. Wendy then gets a call from the NYPD to say that her husband installed a security camera in the back entrance of the penthouse last year, and they know that Douglas hasn’t been in there in months. They also know that Millie left the penthouse prior to Douglas arriving there the night he was killed.

Wendy gets off the phone to find the Russell is dead. His throat has been slashed. She sees that Marybeth, his wife, is there. Marybeth forces Wendy to write a confession and suicide note, and then she tells her that she’s spiked her wine with a heart medication so she will overdose and die.

The book ends with Millie meeting with an officer who tells her she’s in the clear and that she should reach out to him, Officer Rodriguez, if she ever needs help with the abuse victims that she works with. Millie thinks about how she was the one who told Marybeth about her husband’s affair and who gave her the heart medication to use on Wendy.

For more detail, see the full Chapter-by-Chapter Summary.

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