Your Guide to Freida McFadden

I have only read a few Freida McFadden novels, with many more on my own TBR, but she's an author people love and an auto-buy for so many thriller readers. Sometimes an author with such a huge reputation can feel overwhelming with where to start so here's your guide to all things Freida, including the fact that this is not actually her name (welcome to the twists and turns of McFadden).

For a long time Freida McFadden managed to keep her real identity under wraps - using a pseudonym for her career as a best selling thriller writer. This year she chose to reveal that she's actually Sara Cohen, a doctor who somehow manages to also do an incredible amount of writing (how?!). She shared that she had chosen to use a pen name to help keep her patients separate from her stories, and the name Freida actually came as an in joke referencing a hospital acronym for the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database. 

Freida/Sara lives in Boston with her whānau, and her writing really shot to popularity after The Housemaid became a huge hit. However, she has a huge amount of incredible thrillers to choose from - and we'll help you narrow them down! 

The Rapid Fire Release Schedule: I swear every other week I'm sharing another new Freida McFadden book (a slight exaggeration but only marginally). With multiple new books each year, she's got a routine and a recipe that works, and enough regular new books to keep her constantly on our new release table.

The Pace: The thing that makes a thriller hard to put down is the pace - short chapters and tense writing, pages that you are flipping through fast in a way that feels like you just need to keep going a little longer. Freida's novels are no literary genius - they know what they are doing, and they do it well. Her books are a great buster for a reading slump, and a really approachable entry for someone trying to get into reading.

The Twists! You cannot read a McFadden novel and not get surprised by at least one of the many plot twists that will be waiting for you. I think that's what draws me in to them is a guaranteed solid thriller that will leave me guessing the entire time. I still am yet to work out the plot twists in advance for any of her books, but maybe one day.

The Bingeability: I often see people referring to Freida's novels as 'guilty pleasures' or 'popcorn thrillers' and sometimes this can sound like a critique but I think it's really a strength of the books. When we are trying to find the stories that will help us stay off our phones, finding books that are addictive and entertaining is key - and these ones are just that.  

The Variety: A lot of Freida's books draw on her experience in medicine, but there's also plenty that don't. There's thrillers set in domestic homes (The Housemaid), books about Youtube sensations with secrets (You Want to Know a Secret), and staff in an office workplace (The Coworker), ones about getting lost in the woods (One by One) or stranded after a crash in a snowstorm (The Crash), and my personal favourite - the ones set in a prison (The Inmate) or in the mental health unit of a hospital (Ward D). 

Brand new to Freida and want to know which one to pick up? Obviously The Housemaid is an introduction for a lot of people - and a really solid choice for seeing her at her strongest. A live-in housemaid at a wealthy family home starts to notice disturbing behaviours, and starts to feel like maybe she's not as safe as she thought. It's the first in the Housemaid series, and has been turned into an equally excellent film adaptation - and I find it hard to imagine anyone not being hooked after they pick this one up. 

Never Lie is another excellent choice for a newcomer to McFadden, following a newly wed couple who get stranded in a remote mansion of a mysteriously vanished psychiatrist during a snowstorm. It's got some excellent twists and a perfectly eerie atmosphere and would be a great choice for anyone after their next thriller. I also just read Ward D and it was exactly what I wanted - a creepy, locked door scenario set in a mental health unit of a hospital with a lot of very unreliable characters and plot twists that I was nowhere near guessing.

 Dear Debbie is another fun one to start with - it's a little different to Freida's standard story but an entertaining one about the advice giver of a neighbourhood who decides to start taking things into her own hands with some rather, extreme, actions. It's somehow both darker and funnier from your everyday McFadden thriller, but its still a great start to her fast-paced and hard to put down story telling.

Maybe you aren't a newcomer to Freida McFadden, but you're all up to date and looking for something similar to get stuck into while you wait for whatever she gifts us with next. Here's three authors I would recommend!

1. Sarah Pearse 

Sarah Pearse does atmospheric, twisty thrillers that I love. Her books are spine-tingling in the best way, and I've loved her Detective Elin Warner series. Start with The Sanitorium - it has an excellently spooky setting, and a mystery that unravels with plot twists that only Freida could work out (maybe), or jump in to The Wilds - her newest novel. 

2. Riley Sager

Another author with a penname, Riley Sager is another author expert with hidden secrets and shocking climaxes. Sager is slightly more supernatural at times, with a bit more of a dark, horror element to his thrillers - but I still think if you've enjoyed Freida McFadden you should pick up The Only One Left which is an atmospheric thriller set at a decaying mansion on the coast of Maine where a horrifying historic massacre is starting to reveal more secrets.

3. Alice Feeney

Both Hannah and Eve constantly rave about Alice Feeney and her dark, domestic thrillers with unreliable perspectives and plot twists. Feeney's novels are hard to put down, and some of the ones we sell most often to thriller seekers include Rock Paper Scissors and Beautiful Ugly (this one is top of my own TBR after hearing our team encourage so many readers to pick it up!).

We'd love to hear from you! Which Freida McFadden book is your favourite? Which other authors would you compare her to? 

And if you're brand new to her twists and turns, we hope you enjoy picking one up to try!