The Housemaid
A fast-paced psychological thriller in which a woman on parole takes a live-in housekeeping job with a wealthy family and discovers layers of manipulation, cruelty, and dark secrets. The book's heavy themes of domestic abuse, confinement, torture, and infidelity make it adult reading, though the author keeps violence and sexual content non-graphic by design.
Chapters to know about
The protagonist's status as a parolee with a violent criminal past is established immediately and shapes her vulnerability throughout the novel -- context that reframes many later events.
The abuse dynamic -- confinement, gaslighting, emotional cruelty, physical abuse, and coerced self-harm -- builds gradually and is woven throughout the entire narrative rather than isolated to specific chapters.