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The Maid

The Maid Book Cover The Maid
Nita Prose
Fiction
Ballantine Books
January 4, 2022
Hardcover
304
Purchased

Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by.

Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life’s complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.

But Molly’s orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what’s happening, Molly’s unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black—but will they be able to find the real killer before it’s too late?

A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.

My review:

4.5 stars

What an absolute gem of a book! Told from Molly's perspective, we see the inner workings of what she is thinking about all sorts of situations. Molly has many social disorders which are never really categorized, but her inability to read people leads her to trust everyone. This has dire consequences when she is set up to take the fall for a murder at the hotel where she works as a maid. I absolutely loved Molly from the first page. Her world has been turned upside down when her gran, who has always taken care of her and instilled many habits and words of wisdom, dies and leaves her on her own to handle the world out there. Molly does her best to carry on as Gran would have wanted, but finding the dead body of a wealthy hotel patron has her ordered life in a turmoil that she has a hard time navigating. There are some good and bad supporting characters in this story. Some are easy to categorize for the reader (although not for Molly), others take a bit more information before we can make up our mind. This book was absolutely a five star read for me right up until the last few pages when I knocked it down just a bit because of something that is revealed that I'm not sure I liked the way the author resolved it. For me, it didn't quite fit with what Molly would do.

I would call this book a cross between cozy mystery, thriller, and literary fiction. A story told by a protagonist you will be rooting so hard for, don't miss this one!

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