I stopped reading for ten years. Life got in the way. When I finally came up for air, I did what any reasonable person does — I joined a Facebook book recommendation group and let the internet decide.

Mistake. Big mistake.

Because what the internet decided was The Housemaid by Freida McFadden.

Now in fairness — and I will be fair, because I am a fair person — the book is short. It moves fast. The chapters are tiny. Blink and you've done three. It is the literary equivalent of chips. You don't mean to keep going but suddenly it's midnight and here you are. For a first book back after ten years it is going down easy and I am genuinely, embarrassingly hooked.

Because she is building something. I can feel it. There is Millie — and I want to know everything about Millie. What broke her. What she is capable of. What she is hiding. And there is Nina — Nina Winchester, the wife — and something is very wrong with Nina and I want to know what. I want the psychology. I want the past. I want to understand what turned these two women into who they are. The obsession. The trauma. The slow unraveling of two people on a collision course.

And then I remember who wrote this book.

Book One — The Tooth, Freida. THE TOOTH.

Freida McFadden is not just any writer. Freida McFadden is a neurosurgeon. A NEUROSURGEON. This woman has been inside actual human brains. Not metaphorically. Literally inside them. She understands the psychology of obsession, the neurological pathways of trauma, the chemistry of how a predator thinks, how a victim breaks, how the human mind unravels under pressure. She has spent years — YEARS — with more knowledge about the human psyche than any thriller writer alive.

She is going to give me the psychology. She has to. She literally has the knowledge to go there.

So. The big reveal. The psychology of Millie. The psychology of Nina. The deep complex portrait of two broken women and what made them who they are.

Millie is an ex-con. Nina is a housewife locked in an attic.

That's it. That's the psychology.

And then there's the tooth.

THE TOOTH, FREIDA.

Not a psychological trap so perfectly constructed you don't see it coming until the last page. Not a manipulation so subtle it makes your skin crawl for days. Not the kind of villain whose logic is so terrifyingly coherent you have to put the book down and go for a walk.

A man. An attic. Some pliers. A molar.

I have questions. I have so many questions. Was this a patient? Did someone walk into your office one Tuesday afternoon and give you this idea? Did you excuse yourself, run to the parking lot, and call your editor? Did you go home and say — honey, I've got the twist?

Because I need you to explain — and you would know, Freida, YOU WOULD LITERALLY KNOW, you are a neurosurgeon — the exact neurological pathway that connects brain surgery to pliers in the attic.

Book Two — The Floorboard, Colleen. THE FLOORBOARD.

Book two. Also from the group. Also in the top recommendations. Also, apparently, a masterpiece.

Verity. Colleen Hoover.

Now Colleen Hoover is not a neurosurgeon. Colleen Hoover is primarily a romance writer. And it shows. Oh, does it show. Eighty percent of this book is sex scenes. Eighty. Percent. I have seen less explicit content on websites that require you to confirm your age three times. I came for the psychological thriller. I stayed because I kept thinking surely, SURELY, we are done with the sex now and the thriller part is coming.

It was not coming. Only the characters were.

Which means Colleen had twenty percent of a book left to write. Twenty. Percent. That is all she needed. One fifth of a novel to deliver the psychology, the plot, the twist, the tension, the explanation, the resolution.

But fine. Fine. There is a twist. And I will give Colleen this — the twist is genuinely one of the top three most unexpected things I have ever read. I did not see it coming. Nobody sees it coming. You think you know. You do not know.

So. Verity is the wife. Verity is bedridden. Comatose. Unresponsive. Completely destroyed by a car accident. A vegetable. A tragedy. Everyone says so. Her husband says so. The nurses say so. Lowen — the other woman, the one sleeping with her husband three floors down — believes every single second of it.

Verity was faking.

THE WHOLE TIME.

That woman was lying in that bed, fully conscious, listening to her husband fall in love with someone else, watching everything, calculating everything, and did not move a single muscle. For the entire book. That is either the most terrifying thing ever written or the most committed performance in literary history. Possibly both. Honestly? Respect. Horrible, disturbing respect.

Lowen finds out. Lowen has it on camera. Lowen KNOWS.

And says nothing.

Not a word. Does not confront Verity. Does not say — hey, I know you can hear me, I know you are perfectly conscious, I know you have been lying in that bed watching me sleep with your husband and I think we should probably talk about this.

Nothing. Silence. Moving on.

AND THEN Jeremy finds out she has been faking. Loses his mind completely. Strangles her.

She dies.

He strangles his bedridden wife who was not actually bedridden and she dies. Lowen knew. Said nothing. And now Verity is dead. It is a lot.

NOW. The explanation. The reason for all of it. Are you ready.

Verity's literary agent — a professional, a person whose entire job is to understand storytelling and human psychology — told her to write the manuscript as the complete opposite of the truth. As a writing exercise. Write yourself as the villain, she said. Write the darkest version of yourself. Write as though you killed your own children. It will be great for your career, she said.

WHAT AGENT TELLS YOU THIS.

What agent on this entire earth looks at their client — a mother — and says you know what would really sharpen your craft? Write a detailed first person confession to murdering your own daughters. Really inhabit it. Make it convincing. Don't put a warning on it. Don't label it fiction. Just write it, leave it in the house, and we'll say no more about it.

I have an agent. I would like to formally confirm that my agent has never suggested this. Not once. Not even close.

So Verity wrote it. The whole thing. In chilling detail. About killing her own children. Because her agent said to.

And then she hid the letter that explained all of this — the letter that proved she was innocent, the letter that would have saved her life, the truth, THE ACTUAL TRUTH —

Under the floorboards.

UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS, COLLEEN.

Not on the nightstand. Not in her pocket. Not taped to her body. Not emailed to literally anyone with an internet connection. Not slipped to a nurse. Not tucked inside the book her husband reads every night. Not handed to Lowen who was RIGHT THERE and clearly open to conversation.

The floorboards.

Because here is what I need you to understand. This woman survived faking paralysis for YEARS. She survived her husband trying to kill her once before already. She had all that time. Lying in that bed. Doing absolutely nothing. Thinking. Planning. Fully conscious. She could have written another letter. She could have written fifty letters. She had nothing but time and apparently excellent penmanship.

And the plan was the floorboards.

The truth that would have saved her life was under the floorboards.

And then Lowen found it by accident while moving out. After Verity was already dead. WHILE MOVING OUT.

And then Lowen burned it.

I need to lie down.

Meanwhile, in the Group...

While I was reading all of this I was also, as I mentioned, in the group. And I started noticing something.

People were asking for books that would BREAK them. That would make them CRY. That would leave them emotionally destroyed for days. This was not one person. This was many people. Regularly. Enthusiastically. As though emotional devastation was a feature and not a warning label.

I have a question. Just one.

WHY.

Is your life so perfect that you need a book to introduce you to suffering? Do you wake up every morning in such a state of blissful contentment that you require literature to make you feel something? Because I will tell you what makes me cry. My bank account. My bank account makes me cry. Every single month. Without fail. No book required. No twist necessary. Just me, a screen, and the cold hard reality of my finances delivering all the emotional devastation anyone could possibly need.

You want to be broken? Check your bank account. Done. Broken. No bookmark needed.

So. Am I the Problem?

And now I have a question. Not for Freida. Not for Colleen.

For myself.

Am I the problem?

Am I simply too old for this? Too far outside whatever cultural moment produced two million readers who lost their minds over a molar? Have I been away from books so long that I have lost the ability to surrender to a twist, any twist, no matter how many floorboards are involved?

Because I will tell you what I am looking for. What I have been looking for since page one of book one.

I want a book that grabs me by the collar at the first chapter and does not let go. I want to forget I have a house to clean, dinner to make, work to do, taxes to pay and approximately forty seven other things quietly judging me from my to-do list.

I want characters I will learn to love. Or love to hate. Characters with a past, a psychology, a reason for being who they are.

I want fun. Actual fun. Something that makes me laugh on one page and gasp on the next.

I want a twist. A REAL twist. Not a twist I waited three hundred pages for only to realize it was standing in front of me in chapter two wearing a sign. Not a twist so far-fetched it requires a letter under a floorboard and an agent with absolutely no professional instincts. Not a twist that is actually just a love story I misread as a thriller because someone put a dark cover on it.

I want a story. An actual story. From the first page to the last.

Maybe that book is out there.

Maybe it is even in the group.

I will report back.