Who Exactly Is Freida McFadden?

If you scroll on BookTok, then chances are you’ve seen the name Freida McFadden come up a lot. McFadden is the author behind many best-selling and beloved thrillers, including The Housemaid series, Never Lie, and The Boyfriend. Her first Housemaid novel was recently adapted into a psychological thriller starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney. However, there is more to McFadden than meets the eye. While her work has been in the spotlight recently, she has a whole other profession that she works hard to keep private, and a real name that none of her readers will ever know. 

A Pen Name

While her loyal readers know her as Freida McFadden, her real name remains a mystery. In order to keep her medical profession as private as possible, she decided to publish her books under a pen name. In an interview with The Times, she said that, while most of her close friends and family know of her successful writing career, she prefers to keep it hidden from her patients and colleagues to avoid making any of them uncomfortable. "Most people in my life do know," she said. "It’s more that I would like to continue to work without it becoming a thing -- I just want to focus on being a doctor."

Her pen name was inspired by her love of the medicine profession. She said that she decided to use "Freida" as her name because it’s the acronym for the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Database, a program that helps medical students find hospital placements. As for "McFadden", she said that she picked it as her last name because it sounded silly. 

While she still does both on-camera and in-person interviews, she works hard to conceal her identity. During interviews she always wears a wig and glasses as a disguise. During Zoom interviews, she also keeps her background dark to minimize her appearance and background. 

Queen of Twists & Turns

If there’s one thing McFadden’s books are known for, it’s for their crazy twists and turns. If you think you know how the book is going to end, chances are you're wrong. McFadden knows how to keep readers on their toes by giving them complex characters with flaws and attributions that they won’t see until they’re almost done reading. She will also introduce many characters to a story, all of which could be behind the problem, and while the reader can guess who the culprit is, it won’t be easy for them. From The Boyfriend to The Surrogate, her books are filled with page-turning twists where you won’t know who to trust until the very end.