Want to Know a Secret?
Freida McFadden, 2022
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fiction
Domestic suspense about the secrets neighbours keep, told in the short, clipped chapters that turned McFadden's thrillers into a word-of-mouth habit.
Feels like dread, curiosity and unease. About family, identity and morality.
A page from the book
She tells everyone it's fitness; it's really the last high she has left.
I tell everyone that I’m trying to keep fit, but the truth is, the adrenaline I get from running is the only thing close to what I used to feel when I was in the courtroom. If I ever stopped running, I would probably have to start taking speed. I love pushing myself as hard as I can. Freida McFadden.Freida McFadden is a pen name: by day she is a practising physician specialising in brain injury, and she writes her thrillers around the medical job.
Books that feel like this
More by Freida McFadden
The Housemaid
Freida McFadden, 2024
A maid with a secret takes a job in a perfect house where the wife's kindness feels like a warning.
The Housemaid's Secret
Freida McFadden, 2023
Millie has cleaned up other people's secrets before. This penthouse has a locked door, a charming husband, and a wife who never comes out.
The Divorce
Freida McFadden, 2025
A divorce becomes a psychological standoff over custody, lawyers, and a wedding ring—while a voice in the narrator’s head insists something is wrong.
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Questions readers ask
- What is Want to Know a Secret? like?
- Feels like dread, curiosity and unease. About family, identity and morality.
- What should I read after Want to Know a Secret??
- If you liked Want to Know a Secret?, try The Night She Disappeared (Lisa Jewell), Behind Closed Doors (B.A. Paris) and The Husband's Secret (Liane Moriarty).
A taste of the feed
Perfect manners can be the most frightening thing about a person.
We go downstairs and in the hall, he takes my coat from the cupboard and holds it open while I slip my arms into it. In the drive outside, he holds the car door for me and waits until I’m in. As he closes it behind me, I can’t help thinking it’s a shame he’s such a sadistic bastard, because he has wonderful manners.
Behind Closed Doors · B.A. Paris
The generosity of people who have just done something unforgivable.
So Tess was going to be allowed to kick and scratch as much as she wanted. They were just going to sit there and take it for as long as it took. They weren’t going to fight back. Will and Felicity were fundamentally good. She knew this. They were good people, and that’s why they were going to be so nice about this, so understanding and accepting of Tess’s rage, so that in the end Tess would be the bad person, not them. They hadn’t actually slept together, they hadn’t betrayed her. They’d fallen in love! It wasn’t an ordinary grubby little affair. It was fate. Predestined. Nobody could think that badly of them.
The Husband's Secret · Liane Moriarty
What a parent’s ambition feels like from inside the child.
My hand hurts within minutes. It’s pathetic, I guess, but I can’t remember the last time I wrote anything longhand. Plus I’m using my right hand, which never feels natural no matter how many years I’ve done it. My father insisted I learn to write right-handed in second grade after he first saw me pitch. Your left arm’s gold, he told me. Don’t waste it on crap that don’t matter. Which is anything but pitching as far as he’s concerned.
One of Us Is Lying · Karen M. McManus
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