After graduating from college roughly three years ago, I went on what seems to be the classic European trip with a close friend named Cole. When we were at the airport boarding our flight out of North Carolina, he recommended that I read a book he just finished (I’m making the intentional decision to leave it unnamed since The Housemaid is embarrassing enough). It was totally unlike the normal non-fiction books I gravitate towards, but I found myself loving every single page of it.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and Cole recommended a second book to me. This time, though, there was a little bit of a twist to the proposal, which was that there was a movie that was being released for this book, The Housemaid. The plan was straightforward: read the book and then find a time to watch the movie together with our friends.

I’ve been using bullet points for the last few reviews, so I’ll go ahead and keep it consistent and concise with three main remarks here.

  • This book felt like the brain rot of literature. I can say that I almost felt gross reading this the same way you kind of feel gross after spending enough time on your phone or computer, but I’ve never imagined that I would have that feeling after reading a book. The plot itself was fine, but the writing style and some of the predictability can best be described as outright cheesy. This isn’t to say it’s strictly bad because I found myself enjoying every second of it, the same way you do enjoy your screen time.
  • And that leads into my second point. This book is a page turner. There are so many valid criticisms I can make of the book, but I still found myself, along with Cole and all of our other friends who read this book, reading it from start to end incredibly quickly and enjoying every second of it.
  • I mentioned this above, but it’s worth calling out. The writing style felt immature, almost, and it bothered me how the author chose to convey some of the narration and thoughts of the characters. The plot itself was interesting enough. Maybe there is some predictability, but I thought the plot twist was good. I just couldn’t look past the cheesy writing style and how much it subtracted from the plot; I almost had a hard time taking things seriously because of the way this book was written.

But the day I finished the book is the same day I watched the movie. For me, this was somewhat special because this is the first time I’ve ever read a book and watched the movie that pairs with it. It’s interesting to see what things are consistent between the two and what things are dissimilar.

The entire time I was reading the book, I kind of thought in my head that the movie would be able to execute on things better. Even if the writing style in the book is problematic, the plot itself was still fairly interesting to me. I thought that some of the nuance that the book had to explain more explicitly would have been really interesting to see in movie format.

Unfortunately, I was also disappointed in the movie, and it somehow fell even shorter compared to the book. On the bright side, I guess the next time I read a book that has a movie representation, things can only go up from here.

Rating: 2/5