Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! At this point, it’s clear I am addicted to Freida McFadden books. I just can’t help but get swept up into her thrilling twisty tales and enjoy the hard-to-read characters she creates in her books. The Boyfriend is no different. While not at the top of her books, it’s a wild ride from start to finish. While I for sure enjoyed this one, I did find it to be like a few of her other books.
Main Characters:
Sydney: Our main character, who is looking for love in New York and is struggling, when she meets the too-good-to-be-true Tom, it seems like her luck has finally turned around, when women in the city start to be murdered, Sydney starts to question her new relationship and if everything is as it seems to be
Tom: Sydney’s seemingly perfect new boyfriend, who is a successful doctor; however, there are some major skeletons in his closet, and these threaten to ruin his new relationship
Gretchen: Sydney’s friend and neighbour who lives in the same building as her
Jake Sousa: Sydney’s ex and a detective with the NYPD, is investigating the murder of Sydney’s neighbour, Bonnie and worries for his ex and what’s going on around her
Kevin: A man whom Sydney dated before Tom, and who seems like he may be stalking her
My Review
At this point, picking up a Freida McFadden novel means accepting one thing up front: you are going to be lied to. The Boyfriend leans fully into that expectation, delivering a fast, unsettling psychological thriller that plays with trust, perception, and the terrifying idea that you might never really know the person you’re sleeping next to. While it doesn’t quite hit the unhinged heights of McFadden’s very best twists, it’s sharp, addictive, and compulsively readable, exactly what you want when you crack open one of her books. I gave The Boyfriend a 7.5/10 rating overall. It felt a bit similar to some of her other books, so I kind of felt like I knew where a few of the twists were going, but overall still a really good read.
Sydney Shaw is single, unlucky in love, and exhausted by the dating scene. When she meets Tom, charming, attentive, successful, and seemingly perfect, it feels like she’s finally caught a break. Their relationship moves quickly, but not so fast that it feels unrealistic. In fact, that’s part of what makes this book work: everything feels plausible. But then women in the city start disappearing. And suddenly, the question isn’t whether Sydney has found the right guy, it’s whether she’s made a catastrophic mistake.
What McFadden does particularly well here is let the paranoia creep in gradually. This isn’t a story that jumps straight to chaos. Instead, it plants small seeds of doubt, odd behaviour, uncomfortable coincidences, moments that feel just a little off. You find yourself doing what Sydney does: rationalizing, minimizing, convincing yourself you’re overthinking things. That slow erosion of trust is where The Boyfriend shines. The tension doesn’t come from constant action; it comes from not knowing what’s real, and from the fear that by the time you do, it might be too late.
Sydney is a solid McFadden protagonist, likable, but not naïve. Her internal conflict feels realistic, especially the way she balances instinct against emotion. She doesn’t ignore red flags because she’s stupid; she ignores them because she wants to believe she’s finally found something good. That distinction matters. Tom, meanwhile, is unsettling precisely because of how normal he appears. McFadden excels at writing men who feel safe, until they don’t, and The Boyfriend is very much playing in that space. Whether you trust him or not will likely shift multiple times as the story unfolds.
This is where the book lands squarely at an 8/10 for me. The twists are good, solid, well-timed, and engaging, but if you’ve read a lot of McFadden, you may start to sense the direction before the final reveal. That didn’t ruin the experience for me, but it did take away some of the shock factor. That said, McFadden still manages to keep the story tight. Even when you think you know what’s coming, you’re not entirely sure how it will unfold, and that uncertainty keeps the pages turning.
As expected, the pacing is fast and clean. Short chapters, escalating tension, and just enough cliff-hangers to make “one more chapter” a lie you tell yourself repeatedly. This is a book designed to be devoured in a sitting or two, and it succeeds at that completely. The tone is dark but not overwhelming, more unsettling than brutal, which makes it accessible even for readers who don’t want something excessively graphic. What keeps The Boyfriend from ranking among McFadden’s strongest for me is that it doesn’t quite break new ground. The themes, dangerous men, unreliable trust, and romantic vulnerability are familiar territory, and while they’re executed well, they don’t surprise in the way some of her other novels do. Still, a predictable McFadden is often better than most thrillers at their best.
The Boyfriend is a sharp, unsettling reminder that sometimes the most dangerous people aren’t the ones hiding in the dark, they’re the ones texting you goodnight. It’s tense, bingeable, and emotionally uncomfortable in exactly the way McFadden fans expect. If you enjoy psychological thrillers that mess with perception, trust, and romantic vulnerability, this one is well worth the read. A solid, addictive thriller that delivers tension and unease, even if the twists don’t completely floor you.
*** Don’t read any further if you don’t want to read any spoilers ***
Throughout the book, Sydney starts to suspect that Tom is behind the murders going on around the city. After her neighbour Bonnie is killed, things start to get weird with Tom, but Sydney struggles to know why.
It turns out that Gretchen, one of Sydney’s friends who lives in the same building as her, has been lying about who she is. She is actually Daisy, someone connected to Tom in his past. Daisy is the real murderer. She’s obsessive, unhinged, and has been killing every woman Tom has dated out of jealousy or obsession. So the person you thought might be harmless or just awkward is actually the psychopath behind the killings.
Randy, Gretchen’s fiancé and the manager of their apartment building, is strange, and Sydney starts to suspect that maybe she got it wrong and it isn’t Tom, but Randy. But then Gretchen kills him as well, with the intention to kill Sydney, of course, too. Tom, horrified and conflicted, initially tries to deal with the situation. Despite being disturbed by Daisy’s (Gretchen’s) violence, he ends up siding with her briefly in the moment, even offering to run away with her if she spares Sydney.
Sydney makes it out of the situation alive, and we never really know what happens to Tom and Gretchen, but assume they have gone off together, or that maybe even Tom has killed her. Tom’s past shows a lot of dark things, so he could for sure be capable of it.
Later on, now Sydney reconnected with Jake, she got an odd package. In the package is a note telling her that Kevin, the man who was stalking her, will no longer be a problem. We don’t know if it’s from Tom, Daisy, or both, but it implies that either one or both are still keeping an eye on her. I mean, if those two want to go be crazy together, then good for them; they clearly deserve each other.
Thank you for checking out this review! I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to subscribe to the page to be one of the first to know when I release a new review!
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