Sally Ashford should be grateful.After a whirlwind marriage, she returns from honeymoon to discover that her new husband comes with rather more than she bargained for: a beautiful country house, a wealthy family and a live-in housekeeper.
The housekeeper is efficient, attentive and apparently perfect.
She plans the meals. Runs the household. Makes Sally's husband's life effortless.
And somehow, every time Sally objects to something, she ends up looking petty, unreasonable or ungrateful.
Soon the housekeeper is making decisions Sally never agreed to, her husband is taking the other woman's side, and Sally feels less like the mistress of her own home than an awkward guest.
Then she wonders whether this has happened before.
As small acts of 'helpfulness' become harder to dismiss, Sally digs into the housekeeper's past – and discovers that she may not be the first woman to feel herself disappearing inside her own life.
Set in 1990, The Perfect Housekeeper is a darkly witty British domestic psychological suspense novella about manipulation, marriage and the quiet theft of control.
Genre: Mystery
The housekeeper is efficient, attentive and apparently perfect.
She plans the meals. Runs the household. Makes Sally's husband's life effortless.
And somehow, every time Sally objects to something, she ends up looking petty, unreasonable or ungrateful.
Soon the housekeeper is making decisions Sally never agreed to, her husband is taking the other woman's side, and Sally feels less like the mistress of her own home than an awkward guest.
Then she wonders whether this has happened before.
As small acts of 'helpfulness' become harder to dismiss, Sally digs into the housekeeper's past – and discovers that she may not be the first woman to feel herself disappearing inside her own life.
Set in 1990, The Perfect Housekeeper is a darkly witty British domestic psychological suspense novella about manipulation, marriage and the quiet theft of control.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Janet Butler Male's The Perfect Housekeeper