Parents' Guide to The Housemaid

THE HOUSEMAID is Wilhelmina "Millie" Calloway. On parole for murder, she's recently lost her job and apartment and is living in her car. Desperate for a job, she answers an online post from a wealthy family looking for someone to clean and do light cooking. Her interview with Nina Winchester goes well, but Millie is truly surprised when she's offered the job. When Millie is shown to the tiny room in the attic that will be her bedroom, she asks Nina why it only locks from the outside. Nina tell her it was once a closet and that she'll get the lock changed and give Millie a key. Unsettled, Millie remembers what Enzo, the gardener, had whispered as she entered the house: "pericolo." When she later googles it, Millie discovers it means "danger" in Italian. While Millie finds Nina's husband, Andrew, to be handsome, kind, and charming, she can't say the same for their spoiled and "creepy" 9-year-old daughter, Cece. It's not long before Nina's behavior becomes increasingly erratic and she begins to accuse Millie of things she's never done. Then Millie overhears neighbors gossiping about Nina being in "the loony bin" after she'd tried to kill Cece. Despite getting another warning from Enzo about the danger she's in, Millie stays. She puts up with Nina's abuse and Cece's tantrums and tries not to give in to her increasing attraction to Andrew. As the Winchester's marriage unravels and Millie imagines a future with Andrew, the novel switches narrators and Nina begins to tell her story—a story that will upend everything readers thought they knew about what was really going on in the Winchester house.