Review: The Coworker

The Coworker by Freida McFadden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hooter: Judge Less. Read More.

Freida McFadden's The Coworker is one of those books that asks you to trust it. The opening chapters felt slow and I wasn't immediately drawn into the story. Office politics, awkward conversations, Dawn's obsession with turtles, and Natalie's seemingly perfect life all felt a little too ordinary. I kept waiting for something to happen. It eventually does, and when it does, the pages start disappearing quickly.

The turning point comes when Dawn, who has never missed a day of work, suddenly doesn't show up. What follows is a series of twists that constantly force you to question your first impressions. I particularly enjoyed how the book plays with perception. Natalie is confident, successful, and easy to like. Dawn is socially awkward, painfully punctual, and obsessed with turtle facts that seem almost random at first. Those turtle references slowly become one of the book's most memorable motifs. They stop feeling like a quirky personality trait and become a quiet thread running through the entire story. Looking back, they were doing much more work than I realised while reading.

What also worked for me was how believable the office setting felt. The gossip, the subtle exclusion, the judgments we make about colleagues without really knowing them, all of it felt familiar. McFadden builds her twists on these everyday assumptions instead of relying on impossible coincidences. The ending genuinely caught me by surprise, which is becoming increasingly rare with thrillers.

I would comfortably rate this a 5 out of 5. It may not grab you from page one, but if you stay with it, the payoff is worth it. It is a reminder that in thrillers, just like in offices, the person everyone thinks they understand is often the one they understand the least.

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