I finally understand why Freida McFadden’s books fly off the shelves. I picked up The Boyfriend as my first McFadden, and while it’s not without its flaws, I can already see the appeal.
This review may contain spoilers, read at your own risk.
The Premise
The Boyfriend follows Sydney Shaw, a single woman in New York navigating the minefield of modern dating apps. She’s been through the full catalogue of disasters, from catfishers, cheap dates, to men who can’t stop talking about their mothers. But then she meets Tom, who seems almost too perfect to be real. Meanwhile, a serial killer is targeting women up and down the coast. His method? He dates them first.
The second storyline follows Tom in the past, during his high school years. Tom has an intense and deeply unsettling obsession with a girl named Daisy, someone he desperately wants to be with, and also, wants to squeeze the life out of.
If you’re already forming suspicions about how these two storylines connect, McFadden is counting on exactly that.
Sydney: The Character I Wanted to Shake
Let me be honest with you: Sydney irked me. Her best friend gets murdered and her primary concern remains finding the right boyfriend. Red flags wave in her face constantly, and she either doesn’t see them or chooses to look away. There is very little character development in The Boyfriend, not just for Sydney, but for most of the cast. At times, everyone feels like they’re going through the motions, interacting without any real depth beneath the surface.
For a protagonist facing genuine danger, Sydney is remarkably unbothered by things that should alarm her. She even allows a creep from the dating app to hover around her life in a way that no sensible person would tolerate. It’s frustrating.
And yet – and this is the thing about McFadden – you keep reading anyway.
The Twist
Here is where I have to give credit where it is due. McFadden knows her readers. She knows you will form a theory about how Sydney and Tom’s storyline connect. She knows you will be suspicious. And she writes the entire novel around that suspicion, letting you feel clever for having it. Right up until the ending pulls the rug out from under you in a way you genuinely did not see coming.
It’s a neat trick, and she pulls it off well. The plot twist at the end is the book’s strongest moment, and it reframes everything. This is clearly McFadden’s superpower and it’s easy to see why readers keep coming back for it.
The twist delivers, but the resolution after it feels slightly underwhelming. Sydney gets what she deserves, in a sense, but it didn’t land with the satisfaction I was hoping for. Tom’s storyline wraps up in a way that felt a little too quickly. After all that build-up, the ending needed just a little more.
Who is This Book For?
Here’s the thing, The Boyfriend by Freida McFadden is not a book to read seriously. It is not Postmortem. It is a cosy thriller: fast, fun, a little ridiculous, and completely readable in a day or two. If you pick it up in the right mindset of escapism, a quick break from the real world, something to read when you just want to turn your brain off without putting the book down, it works beautifully.
Think of it as the literary equivalent of a reality dating show. Enjoyable precisely because you know it’s not meant to be taken too seriously.
If you’ve been curious about Freida McFadden but haven’t started yet, this is a perfectly fine entry point.
Rating: 3 Muse Points. A reading experience when the world gets a little too much.
About the Author
Freida McFadden is a physician based in Boston and the #1 New York Times, Sunday Times, and internationally bestselling author of numerous psychological thrillers including The Housemaid. She is the winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Paperback Original and the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Thriller, and was named one of TIME 100’s most influential people in 2026. Her novels have been translated into more than 45 languages.
