So I spent this week reading a really amazing book that shook me to my core and I felt like I should talk about it.
I don't know what I had expected when I picked this book up from the library on my phone but it certainly was not what I ended up getting, lol.
I picked this book because I thought it would be an easy read. Something to reintroduce me to my reading self. Something not that complex. Something that I could read without actually caring much about reading it. Something I could half-read while my short attention span brain wanders off slightly.
Spoiler alert: that was not the case. At all!
This book starts off like that: an easy read but I promise you, you are not ready for the Rollercoaster you are about to be on!
You start out by thinking: oh a simple book about an ex-con who gets hired by an eccentric rich lady with a devastatingly hot husband, no biggie but…that not it! That's so not it! Your brain is about to be spun, you just don't know it yet!
THE HOUSEMAID ( THE SYNOPSIS)
Warning: this synopsis contains all the novel's spoilers…
Anyway, so there are three major people in this story. There's Whelmina Calloway, Nina Winchester and Andrew Winchester.
Whelmina Calloway who is called Millie throughout the story got out of prison on parole for a crime she committed when she was still a teenager.
So Millie is out of prison, she is hyped and motivated to get her life back on track. There's however one slight issue: she's unable to get a job and she has to have a job to prove to her Parole officer and basically the people that let her out of jail that she can be a functional member of society.
Not being able to get a job is a huge problem for Millie but this problem is solved after her interview with Nina.
Nina is very welcoming, very cordial. She takes Millie round her huge mansion that she shares with her husband Andrew and her daughter Cecilia.
She tells Millie what her duties would be. Nina tells Millie that she cannot wait to start working with (not for) her (Nina).
Millie goes back to sleeping in her car, hoping that Nina would call her to start working. Millie is hopeful, she wants to keep her faith alive but she knows deep down that Nina would not employ her because of her prison record butttt Nina calls. Millie gets hired and they all lived happily ever after right? Wrong!
This is where the real problem begins.
Please buy me a cup of coffee.
You see, for someone who looks well together, Nina has a lot going on beneath the surface. She is struggling with some psychological issues.
She is nice one second and the next she's mean. She says things and then denies ever saying them. She is a bitch to Millie and her daughter Cecilia does not make Millie's job any easier.
Millie soon realizes that working for the Winchesters might be the greatest pain in her life. Her only consolation is the large salary she receives… as well as getting to look at Andrew Winchester, Millie's stunning husband every single day.
Millie hates the creepy feeling she gets whenever she goes to her room in the attic of the Winchester's large mansion. She really really dislikes Nina and Cecilia but she stays.
Her stay at the mansion becomes more bearable after her first conversation with Andrew (Nina's husband). They soon build a bond. Millie develops a secret crush on Andrew. Andrew is super nice to Millie and super oblivious to his wife's brewing jealousy. A toxic love triangle is formed.
At first, Millie feels bad for having a crush on Andrew. She knows it is wrong but she placates her guilt by reminding herself that she has no control over who she loves.
It is easier for her to give in to her crush on Andrew because Nina is a bitch to her anyway.
Millie reasons that Nina is not a good fit for Andrew: Nina treats Andrew like shit even though he is nothing but kind to her every single time (Millie had seen Nins yell at Andrew on multiple occasions).
Nina does not appreciate the life Andrew gives her, she's always bitching about something.
Nina cannot give Andrew the baby he desperately wants.
Nina is mentally unstable. She had tried to drown her own daughter.
Nina is not even beautiful anymore. She does not go to the gym.
She lets her roots grow out without booking hair appointments, blah blah blah.
Millie thinks she is more deserving of Andrew than Nina so when Andrew comes on to her in the car on their way to a theater show when Nina was away, Millie does not object. They get a hotel, have sex and when Nina returns home from dropping Cece off for camp, Andrew throws her out of the house.
Millie finally gets what she wants: Andrew Winchester. She's thrilled, determined to remove every trace of Nina from the house.
Millie is very excited to start a new life with Andrew. With Nina gone, she thinks she would finally get the life she wants. Plot twist… she doesn't. She instead discovers how much of a fucking psycho Andrew Winchester is.
NINA'S POV
Nina used to be a single mom who worked as an assistant at Andrew's father's company. Andrew Winchester was her boss's boss's boss.
She met Andrew one day when she was delivering files to her boss's office. Andrew witnessed Nina's boss being mean to her because she was lactating. Andrew's savior complex kicked in and he decided that he would like to own Nina.
Three months later they were married. It was blissful at first but then the first sign of Andrew's unwellness came when Nina forgot to book a hair appointment and her roots grew out.
Andrew locked Nina up in the attic for hours with only three bottles of water in the mini fridge. He said he would only let her out if she plucks at hundred strands of her hair (it must contain the dark root), place it in one of the envelopes in the drawers and slip the envelope to him from the gap under the attic's door.
Nina refused at first because…what the helly! But after staying hungry in the attic for over a day she succumb and sent the hair strands to Andrew.
The dude meticulously checked every hair strand and decided that one was deformed so Nina had to produce new hundred hair strands.
She did and was let out of the attic.
Nina's first instinct was to run after being let out but she could hardly move. Andrew (the monster that had just tortured her) was so kind to her. He brought her food and carried her to the bed then left for work.
This made Nina think that she had imagined everything that happened.
She heard the sound of water coming out of the faucet of their bathroom. She at first thought it was just Andrew but after weakly reaching for her phone and seeing multiple text messages from Andrew asking if she was okay because she sounded distressed when they last spoke, she knew it could not be him in the bathroom.
Andrew's multiple texts confused Nina because they had not spoken since before she fell asleep. She crawled to the bathroom only to see her daughter, Cecilia, about to be drowned.
This was when the police showed up.
The story became that Nina had severe depression and so she had drugged herself and her daughter and tried to kill the both of them.
Nina was sent to a mental health facility. She even started to believe all that was said about her. However, when she got back home and inevitably did something wrong again, she was sent to tempt attic for another punishment.
This made Nina realize that she was not being delusional about the first incident.
This was the beginning of Nina and Andrew's harming circle: whenever Nina does something imperfectly she's punished in the attic. The punishment is self-inflicted. It usually corresponds with the mistake she made.
INSERT MILLIE
Millie was only brought into the picture to replace Nina. Nina figured that if Andrew meets someone else that he would like to own then he would let her and her daughter go.
Millie was carefully picked by Nina.
She was picked because she's stunning…Andrew would like that and most of all, she has a record so she would be desperate for the job.
Nina made a conscious effort to be very mean to Millie so that it would kill whatever guilt Millie might have about stealing Andrew. And Also, Nina being mean to Millie would tickle Andrew's savior complex, and he would want to save Millie like he did Nina.
Nina also made to conscious effort to let herself go physically. She started eating more unhealthy foods, started working out less and started breaking Andrew's golden rule by letting her hair grow out without booking hair appointments.
At first, Andrew did the whole attic punishment for each transgression but when he saw that that did not work, after his attention shifted to Millie, he gave up.
Anyway, Millie finally gets Andrew but he is not the person she had thought him to be.
She thought Nina was the one with the psychological issues but it was starting to look like Andrew was also not okay.
Andrew locks Millie in attic and demands that she balances three heavy books on her stomach for not reading them like he asked her to.
At first she thinks that he is joking but later she realizes that he is not.
Millie eventually does what Andrew had asked of her. He opens the door and she pepper sprays him with the pepper spray she had found in the bucket in the attic. The pepper spray Nina had left when she started feeling sorry for what she was about to put Millie throughout.
Andrew loses his balance. Millie sees this as an advantage to and successfully locks him in the attic.
Another game begins with Andrew as the victim.
Millie tells him that of he puts the three heavy books on his groin area for three hours, she'll let him go. Then she laughed and tells him she meant five hours so he had to start all over again. Then she makes him take out all his teeth with a pliers.
Guysss the biggest gag of this whole story comes during Andrew's funeral.
Please read these two pages (by the way Evelyn is Andrew's mother. She never like Nina and Cecilia):
What the actual…
Yeah that's crazy!
Whenever Andrew would take do the horrible attic thing, he would always say something like when you misuse something you lose the privilege to have that thing.
Like when Nina would let her roots grow out, he would make her remove strands of her hair.
To this think that his mother…
Anyway, neither Nina nor Millie go to jail because there's literally nothing to charge them with. The man did all those things to himself, they did nothing! And also the police man involved is the father to Andrew's ex-girlfriend whom he also abused so he basically let's the case die
*
The book was an amazingggg read! my favorite part was when Millie was torturing Andrew, also when Nina picked Cecilia up…the thought of them being free felt great.
Like most things that has to do with the brain and stuff, there's this thought of “was it really his fault?”. He clearly needed help but did his actions outweigh his access to empathy.
What do you think?