The Tenant by Freida McFadden | Tropes, Summary, Review and Quotes

The Dark Doyenne
Dec 26, 2025
4 min read

There are thrillers that scare you.

There are thrillers that shock you.

And then there are thrillers that make you irrationally furious over something as seemingly mundane as bad smells.

The Tenant by Freida McFadden falls firmly into the third category.

I gave this book a solid 4.5 stars, because it did exactly what it set out to do — make me deeply, viscerally uncomfortable. And honestly? That counts for a lot.

Book Overview

Title: The Tenant

Author: Freida McFadden

Genre: Psychological Thriller, Domestic Thriller

Rating: 4.5/5

The Tenant by Freida McFadden Tropes

Stranger in the house
Domestic thriller
Unreliable narrator
Psychological paranoia
Secrets and lies
Morally grey protagonist
Psychological thriller
Domestic thriller
Feminine rage

Summary of The Tenant by Freida McFadden

The Tenant is a fast-paced psychological thriller centred around Blake, a man whose life begins to unravel after he rents out a room in his home. What starts as a practical decision quickly spirals into paranoia, discomfort, and the creeping sense that something is very wrong — not just with the tenant, but with Blake himself.

As with most Freida McFadden books, the chapters are short, the pacing is relentless, and the tension builds quietly until it becomes impossible to ignore. In a very “my skin feels dry, itchy and I want to scratch myself all over” way.

Blurb of The Tenant by Freida McFadden

Blake Porter is riding high, until he's not.

Fired abruptly from his job as a VP of marketing and unable to make the mortgage payments on the new brownstone that he shares with his fiancee, he's desperate to make ends meet.Enter Whitney. Beautiful, charming, down-to-earth, and looking for a room to rent. She's exactly what Blake's looking for. Or is she?Because something isn't quite right.

The neighbors start treating Blake differently. The smell of decay permeates his home, no matter how hard he scrubs. Strange noises jar him awake in the middle of the night. A

nd soon Blake fears someone knows his darkest secrets...

Danger lives right at home, and by the time Blake realizes it, it'll be far too late.

The trap is already set.

My review of The Tenant by Freida McFadden

Here’s the thing: I am extremely sensitive to bad smells and unpleasant sounds. Always have been.

So when The Tenant introduced the idea of waking up every morning to constant itching and the smell of something rotten inside your own home, my brain immediately decided this was personal.

McFadden weaponizes the mundane brilliantly in this book. There’s no grand supernatural evil here, just shared walls, invasive presence, and a smell that refuses to be identified or eliminated. That makes you second-guess your sanity. That turns your own home into a hostile environment.

The discomfort isn’t dramatic; it’s persistent. And that’s why it works.

Anyone who has ever lived with roommates, rented out a space, or had their personal boundaries slowly eroded will feel this book crawling under their skin. The horror lies in not being able to escape your own house — a place that’s supposed to feel safe.

Blake as a protagonist makes me want to punch him in the face

Blake Porter is not exactly a likable protagonist. And I don’t think he’s meant to be.

He’s flawed, increasingly reactive, and morally questionable in ways that go beyond the central mystery. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Blake is not just a victim of circumstance, he’s also someone who has made choices that complicate how much sympathy he deserves.

Freida McFadden excels at writing characters who exist in moral grey zones, and Blake fits that pattern perfectly. You’re not rooting for him so much as you’re watching him unravel.

And honestly? That tension is one of the book’s biggest strengths.

Lord, that signature McFadden writing style

If you’ve read Freida McFadden before, you know the drill.

Short chapters. Cliffhanger endings. A mounting sense that you’re missing something important. The Tenant follows that familiar formula, but it does so efficiently. There’s no unnecessary padding, no drawn-out exposition.

The twists aren’t outrageous for the sake of shock. And while some readers may be able to predict certain turns, the execution keeps the tension intact.

It’s a binge-read, through and through.

Quotes from The Tenant by Freida McFadden

“Is it such an awful thing to want retribution against people who have wronged you?”
“I do love him. So much. But I don’t trust him.”
“He’s going to kill you,” the older woman blurts out. “Blake is going to kill you”
“I’m going to make him pay.”

Now let’s talk about the ending

The Tenant doesn’t wrap things up neatly, and I appreciate that. Instead of offering clean moral resolution, it leaves you sitting with an uncomfortable question:

Did Blake really deserve to survive?

Because here’s my thing — cheating on your spouse is not a harmless flaw. It’s a betrayal in its simplest form. And while it’s not a crime punishable by law, it is, in my book, morally punishable. When you stack that betrayal alongside everything else that unfolds, it becomes harder to view Blake as someone who simply endured bad luck.

But between losing the job, his home and almost being poisoned to death, I guess Blake got what he deserved.