The Housemaid's Secret
It tells a story. Hardcover files this book as fiction, and its readers there call it mysterious, tense and dark. Facts, not factors: neither plays any part in our call.
Listen to it
Audio has the easy job on this one: 39 readers call it fast and only 4% of the reviews we read called it demanding, so nothing in it needs a page you can flick back through. The recording and the book are received about equally well: Lauryn Allman’s reading sits in the middle 40% of our shelf of books, on 21,339 ratings of the narration. So the format is doing all the work here.
Length does not decide this
9h 44m to listen, at 1×7h 47m to listen, at 1.25×6h 29m to listen, at 1.5×5h 34m to listen, at 1.75×4h 52m to listen, at 2×about 10 hours to readabout 8 hours to readabout 6 hours to readabout 5 hours to readabout 4 hours to read
The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 311 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 311 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 311 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 311 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 311 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.
Slot → chore-safe
About as demanding in audio as The Little Prince.
Easier to hear than 98% of the books we hold.
Easier to hear than 97% of the fiction we hold.
Easier to hear than 98% of the middling-length books we hold.
Reading load against listening load
Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the bottom 14% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the bottom 3% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears. The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.
What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.
How the call was made
Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.
- The audio case
- 2.08It sits in the top 5% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. Past the line where we start backing the recording.
- Narration payoff
- 0.09Lauryn Allman’s reading and the book are received about equally well: in the middle 40% of our shelf of books, on 21,339 ratings of the narration. This is a difference, not a score: it sets the reading against its own book, so a much-loved book with a merely good reading sits low on this shelf even where nobody disliked either. That is measured on standardised figures rather than on the stars in the charts below, and here the two disagree: listeners mark a performance higher than a story as a rule, 4.62 against 4.54 across our shelf, so this recording’s 4.67 for the performance beside 4.60 for the story is not the level pair it looks. Against their own crowds they are +0.22 and +0.25, which is the same sum the toggle over those charts does. Asked the other way (how the reading stands against what the book’s own readers made of it, which is a different crowd rating a different thing), it comes out 0.36. We report that one and never score it: two crowds that do not overlap are held together by nothing but the standardising, which is a cost the figure above does not pay.
- What is at stake
- −0.29It sits between the bottom 27% and the top 33% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: middling regard, so this barely moves the call either way. Blended across 1,996,972 Goodreads ratings and 749 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
For the page
- The crowds’ regard did not reach the line where we protect a first read, this reason did not apply
For the recording
- The voice and the book are received about level
- An easy listen anyway
- 21,339 listeners behind it
So the case for the recording won it clearly.
A bigger dot counted for more: the voice and the ear are sized by their share of the sum above, the other two by how much stands behind them. A hatched square is a reason that did not apply here, which is not the same as one that counted for little.
- Evidence
- 1.00How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The reading21,339 people have rated this reading: as good as it getsThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 749 readers there: as good as it getsThe matchHow sure we are that the recording we scored is this book: as good as it getsThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it gets
What each crowd complains about
We would need 40 reviews from each crowd before setting the two side by side, and only 26 of the reviews we read said they listened to it. So we are not drawing this one.
What the two crowds said
Showing the stars as each shop prints them. The two crowds are not measured from the same place: on our shelf Audible’s listeners average 0.35 of a star above Goodreads’ readers, so a recording that is ordinary for Audible can still out-star a book that is genuinely well liked for Goodreads. Switch the toggle to take that difference off.Showing each figure as its distance from its own crowd’s middle on our shelf, in standard deviations, so 0 is a typical book for that crowd. Listeners start 0.35 of a star up, partly because anyone who finishes a twenty-five-hour recording chose it deliberately, and this takes that off. It is not a claim that audio is better, the story figure is still Audible’s own (people rating a story they heard), and none of it moves the verdict above.
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
23,012 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
How often this goes badly2.0% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars. About typical for the shelf. The middle of our shelf is 2.0%, and half of it falls between 1.0% and 3.1%.
421 of 21,348 listeners gave the performance one or two stars
The shape of the room
- United, this one
- Warm
- Split
- Lukewarm
A united room: 77% of the listeners gave the performance five stars. A room that agrees this far leaves little to gamble on.
21,348 ratings
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
21,339 ratings
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
1,996,972 ratings
The series
The Housemaid
No more announced yet · One voice throughout
3 books numbered on Goodreads’ list, with 1 novella or companion filed between them. Everything Goodreads lists is published, the last of it in 2024, and nothing new is announced, which is not the same thing as finished. We start saying finished after five quiet years.
Lauryn Allman reads all of the 3 volumes Audible names in our records, with other voices joining on some of them — a cast, not a change of narrator.
From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.
Every reading we hold
One complete reading of this book, and it is the reading every audio figure above is measured on. If there is another, we have not found it. The shelf grows in reviewed batches, never because somebody searched for a book.
- Lauryn Allmanour pick9h 44m7h 47m6h 29m5h 34m4h 52m · One voice · Audible UK and US
- The same voice all through
Performance 4.67 · Story 4.60 · 21,339 rated the reading · 2.0% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars
Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load
The recording we mean
- Runtime
- 9h 44m at 1×
- Read by
- Lauryn Allman
- Kind
- One voice
- ASIN
- B0BSVG69P4 · Audible UK
- Rated in
- Audible UK and US · 1,788 + 19,560 ratings of the performance
- Judged on
- 21,339 ratings of the narration
- Published
- Hachette UK - Bookouture · 2023
Audible sorts a search by newest, so ours may not be the first one you are offered. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 9h 44m, that is the reading these numbers describe. “Judged on” is the crowd behind every judgement we make about this reading: the smaller of the performance and story counts, which is why it is a little under the two shop counts added. We do not link out to a shop, and we take nothing if you buy there.