courtofbooksanddogs's Reviews (350)

👁️ Spoiler-free ARC Review for The Housemaid is Watching by Freida McFadden 👁️

The third and final installment in Freida’s viral Housemaid series! Taking place more than a decade after the events of The Housemaid’s Secret, Millie just wants the simple suburban family life she’s always dreamed of with her husband and children, but most of all to leave her past behind. With a nosy neighbor on one side and a judgmental neighbor on the other, Millie begins to wonder if this life she dreamed of is all it’s cracked up to be. 

Such a beautiful ending to a great series! I loved to see Millie begin to live her dream life as a wife and mother. Freida is so excellent at hooking readers. I started it this morning and next thing I knew, I’d finished it in one sitting. She’s the only author that happens with basically every time 😂

Character development is huge in this novel. We see characters we already loved grow into even better characters. We meet new characters that we love and others who get under our skin. Of course it wouldn’t be a Freida without some amazing plot twists! My mouth was gaping in surprise more than once. If you’ve read her other Housemaid books (if you haven’t, why?!) give this one a go! 👏 It releases on June 11th in stores and on Kindle Unlimited! 

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This one is a little too dark for me right now. I might come back and finish it down the road.

I wasn’t sure about that his book at first and next thing you know, I’m finishing it. Absolutely worth the hype! So good! It is most definitely YA and has stupid teens making stupid choices that aren’t always realistic, but books don’t always have to be realistic or make sense to be good. This is one of those books!

This book. It feels weird to sum up in words what I think of someone else’s life story and traumas. For that reason, I’m not rating it, but I’ll try to talk more about how this book made me feel rather than critique the content. 

I’m Glad my Mom Died is a memoir about the author’s experience as a child star on Nickelodeon, having a narcissistic mother, eating disorders, religious deconstruction, OCD, and other things. I highly recommend listening to this 100% on audiobook at 1.0x. It’s worth taking the time to hear the author’s voice inflections as she tells her story. 

This book isn’t light. The quip on the cover saying it’s funny is weird to me because it’s not. It’s heavy and it’s dark at times. I waited to read this until I felt I was in a place to be able to handle it. It made me feel angry, baffled, but most of all sad. Not just for the author, but for so many who struggle with similar issues as her and her mother. What I deeply appreciate the most is she takes a good amount of the book to share her experiences in therapy. It’s a raw account of how hard therapy is and that healing is not a linear process. We don’t get it right immediately and sometimes it’s gets harder before it gets better. 

I’m so grateful for her willingness to share her story with the world. I took pieces I needed out of it for my own life. It was truly a privilege to listen to her story. 

AMAZING 🙌 The twist at the end of part 1 was gut wrenching though! I am officially sucked into the series!

Finally finished after putting it down a while ago. Not my favorite HBY, but it was sweet!