Genre: Psychological Thriller Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5 Stars)
The internet has been dragging this book and I am genuinely surprised. Let me explain.
The Coworker by Freida McFadden has taken a beating in the BookTok comments and I went in knowing that. But here is the thing, people had the same energy about The Tenant and I loved The Tenant. So I made a decision to tread lightly, keep an open mind, and form my own opinion.
My verdict? Three stars. Not her worst. Not her best. And absolutely not the disaster people are making it out to be.
A Quick Disclaimer
Before anything else I want to say this, if you have been avoiding The Coworker because of the hate it has been getting online I think you should still read it and decide for yourself. BookTok consensus is not always the right consensus and this book has more going for it than the reviews suggest. It also has some real issues that I am going to be honest about. But the reaction it has gotten feels disproportionate to the actual reading experience.
Tread lightly. Form your own opinion. That is always my advice.
The Two Main Characters
The Coworker centers on two women whose dynamic drives the entire story.
Natalie is your classic top performer. The best sales person in the office. Beautiful, successful, put together, all the things. She is the kind of person who makes it look effortless and who everyone gravitates toward.
Dawn is her polar opposite in every possible way. She struggles with social anxiety. She does not fit in. She eats monochromatic meals, every meal the same color, and lives by an extremely strict routine that cannot be disrupted without significant consequences. People at the office are genuinely harsh toward her and it is uncomfortable to read in a way that feels very intentional.
Whether Freida McFadden explicitly labels Dawn’s condition or not I will leave for you to discover but it is clear that Dawn lives with either OCD or autism or some combination of both. And what I genuinely loved about this character is the depth that comes with those details. The monochromatic meals. The strict routine. The way she processes the world differently from everyone around her. Dawn is one of the more layered and carefully constructed characters Freida has written and I think that gets lost in all the criticism.
The Turtle Thing
I have to be honest. The turtle obsession was a lot.
Dawn’s fixation on turtles is a significant part of her characterization and I understand why it is there, it is part of what makes her who she is and it adds to the depth of her character. But by a certain point in the book I was genuinely tired of hearing about turtles. It crossed the line from characterization into repetition and that repetition slowed the reading experience in a way that was hard to ignore.
The Frame Job: Where This Book Shines
Here is where The Coworker gets genuinely good. When Dawn turns up dead and Natalie finds herself being framed for the murder the setup is so solid it almost made me forget every complaint I had about the pacing.
Whoever built this frame did their homework. The level of detail, the time and intention that went into setting Natalie up, it is impressive and it reads as impressive. You know early on that Natalie did not do this. What keeps you reading is trying to figure out who did and how they constructed something this airtight around her.
When the reveal comes it lands the way a Freida twist should. And then it does not stop there. More twists keep coming and that momentum in the final section is the best the book gets.
What Held It Back
Two things cost this book a higher rating for me.
The emails. There are lengthy email exchanges woven throughout the story as part of the setup and while the concept is a great addition to the frame job the execution goes on far too long. They slow the pacing significantly and there were stretches where I felt the book losing me because of how much time was spent in those exchanges. Shorter emails would have made the same point with more impact.
The final ending. After all the twists and all the setup the very end just did not have the wow factor I needed. Freida McFadden endings usually leave me sitting with the book closed just processing. This one did not do that. It landed flat when it should have landed hard and that is the thing I keep coming back to when I think about the overall experience.
Final Verdict
The Coworker is a Freida McFadden book with a genuinely strong premise, a beautifully constructed frame job, and one of her most interesting supporting characters in Dawn. It is held back by repetitive characterization, overly lengthy emails, and a final ending that does not stick the landing the way her best work does.
Three stars. Not her worst. Not her best. Worth reading and worth forming your own opinion about, do not let the internet decide this one for you.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐
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Have you read The Coworker? Drop your rating in the comments, do you agree with the BookTok hate or do you think it deserved better?
