Best-selling The Housemaid author Freida McFadden reveals true identity

 

Freida McFadden, whose real name is Sara Cohen, chose her pseudonym after a medical database called Freida(Image:Getty Images)

One of the biggest mysteries in publishing has been solved, after the best-selling US author known to millions of readers as Freida McFadden revealed her true identity.

 Due to thrillers like The Housemaid, McFadden has become one of the world's most popular authors in recent years. The author has never made a secret of the fact Freida McFadden is a pseudonym, and that she also works as a doctor, but had never revealed her real name.

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 She now tells USA Today that she is Sara Cohen. She explained, "I'm at a point in my career where I'm tired of this being a secret." "I'm sick of people arguing about whether I'm a real person or three men. I'm a real person with a real identity who has nothing to hide. She was the second best-selling author in the UK in 2025 under the name McFadden, selling 2.6 million books and six million printed copies in her home country. The Housemaid, which was first published in 2022 and was made into a movie last year starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney, fueled those sales. In the UK in 2025, only Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo, sold more books than McFadden did. She has written 29 novels so far, and three of them, The Housemaid, Want to Know a Secret?, have already topped the best-seller lists this year. and Dear Debbie.

'Patients might find it weird'

Cohen initially chose a pen name to hide her true identity when she self-published her first book, a fictionalised account of her life as a resident doctor, titled The Devil Wears Scrubs, in 2013.

 She chose the name Freida as a medical in-joke - after a hospital training registry, the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database.

 She continued to write while working as a doctor in Boston, Massachusetts, who specialized in brain disorders. When she started writing psychological thrillers, her publishing career took off. But she kept the two identities separate, telling the New York Times in 2024 that she worried her patients might feel weird about being treated by a best-selling thriller writer.

 She stated, "At work, I want to be a doctor." "A lot of my books have medical stuff in them, and I don't want people saying, 'Is this based on me?'  It feels unprofessional."

 She stated to the Washington Post in the same year that she did not "like to be the center of attention." "I love that people are reading my books," she said.  "However, focusing specifically on me is difficult...

She told the newspaper, "It's not just about privacy but also about social anxiety." She said her success as an author had made her more concerned that she might not be "that amazing person that everyone expects you to be."

'Hospital colleague recognised me'

However, her success enabled her to work as a doctor part-time in 2023, and she has since reduced that work even further, making it simpler to reveal her true identity. "My whole goal was to keep it a secret until I was [ready to] step back from my doctor job, so it wouldn't be like everyone I work with suddenly knew and it compromised my ability to do my job," she told USA Today.

 "However, I have resigned from my position. I'm only working like once or twice a month."

 She added: "I just realised I was completely overwhelmed from trying to do both."

 Additionally, it had become increasingly challenging for her to maintain her dual identity. In January, she told the Times, "The cat is out of the bag because one of my colleagues at the hospital recently recognized me in a Freida photo and told everyone."

"However, I tried to repay them with a book signing at work because they've been really respectful about not posting anything about me on social media." Cohen wears a wig for Freida appearances and interviews, but only because, as she told USA Today, "I have no idea how to style my hair." She stated that she still wishes that the McFans and Freida Readahs, who are her fans, would continue to refer to her by her pen name. "Even though I haven't told my real name until now, I feel like I have shared the real me all along and everything I've told them has been the truth," she said.

 "Even though the name will be a surprise, nothing else will.  I've always been open and honest with my readers.

SOurce: BBC