10 books like The Housemaid
The pull of The Housemaid is the house itself: a beautiful home with a locked door at the top of it, and a narrator who knows more than she's letting on. These picks keep that combination of domestic claustrophobia, unreliable narration and a twist that rearranges everything you've read.
Updated September 2026
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The hired help inside a rich family's house
The Last Mrs Parrish by Liv Constantine 2017
An outsider works her way into a golden couple's household with a plan of her own, and the second half flips the whole picture the way Millie's story does; here the infiltrator's scheming is laid out from the start rather than hidden from us.
Verity by Colleen Hoover 2018
A woman takes a job in a wealthy writer's home and finds a manuscript that tells her exactly what the wife is capable of, with the same queasy pull towards the husband; it's far more explicit sexually than The Housemaid.
The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani 2016
A live-in employee and the family who need her curdle into something terrible, with the same fascination about who holds power in a household; the tone is cold literary realism and the ending is announced on page one.
The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan 2019
Old money, a grand house and a returning nanny whose past won't stay buried give this the same class-resentment charge; the structure is a slower family mystery with bones in the lake rather than a locked attic.
Marriages that look immaculate from the outside
Behind Closed Doors: The gripping, shocking, million-copy and international bestselling psychological thriller from the author of The Dilemma by B.A. Paris 2016
A perfect house, a perfect husband and a wife who cannot get out — the claustrophobia is even tighter than the Winchesters'; the horror is a slow squeeze instead of a mid-book reversal.
The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn 2021
Another narrator who has done things she's carefully not telling you, and a rich seam of female rivalry and status envy; the arena is a college reunion, not a marriage.
Narrators you slowly stop trusting
None of This is True by Lisa Jewell 2023
A stranger attaches herself to a comfortable middle-class life and quietly takes it apart, with the same sense that the sympathetic one is the dangerous one; Jewell tells it through podcast transcripts and documentary extracts.
Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land 2017
A girl placed in a wealthy family's home narrates her new life while withholding what she's capable of, which is exactly Millie's trick; the writing is jagged and interior, with no comic edge at all.
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn 2006
A mother who performs perfection while harming the people in her care, seen by a narrator with her own damage; it's a Missouri crime novel and considerably bleaker.
Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson 2011
A woman trapped in a house with a husband whose account of their marriage may be a lie, and a reveal that recasts everything; the trap here is memory rather than a bolted door.
If you also liked…
- Jack Reacher by Lee Child
- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan
Questions
- Which of these is closest to The Housemaid in feel?
- The Last Mrs. Parrish — same wealthy household, same servant-and-mistress power game, same mid-book reversal. Verity is the closest for the mix of a job in someone's house and a dangerous attraction to the husband.
- Are any of these as steamy?
- Verity is more explicit than The Housemaid. The rest keep sex mostly off the page; Behind Closed Doors and Good Me Bad Me are disturbing rather than romantic.
- I want something twisty but not as dark. What should I avoid?
- Skip Sharp Objects, The Perfect Nanny and Good Me Bad Me, which deal in child harm and self-injury. The Wife Between Us and None of This Is True give you the reveals with a lighter touch.