The Maid: A Novel

Occasionally, you’ll encounter a character in a book you wish you could know in real life. Molly Gray is this character. She is a maid in a five-star hotel and takes her job just as seriously as a neurosurgeon would. Molly was raised by and lived with her grandmother, whom she recently lost. Though she has lived through hard times, Molly has a gracious attitude. Molly has not only lost her grandmother; she has been taken advantage of by a so-called boyfriend who robbed her and left her destitute. She is late on her rent and walks to places to save money. That isn’t the end of Molly’s difficulties. She is aware that she is unlike other people. She misreads social cues, and her earnestness and childlike trust get her into trouble. One thing can be said about Molly; she is unfailingly kind to everyone she meets, even those who are not always kind to her.She is a meticulous worker, so she is often assigned to take care of the rooms of important guests. She finds the occupant dead in the room of one such guest. In her efforts to do the right thing, she becomes a target. Thus begins a murder mystery that has Molly entangled in murder charges.I have rarely read a book where I got so invested in the main character. This is an excellent read for anyone who likes a good story, mystery or not. (It’s also a top-notch mystery; the twists and turns will leave the most avid armchair sleuth guessing.) The characters are utterly believable. It’s my favorite book of the year.

This story was not at all what I expected. It was the story of a strong young woman who had wonderful self awareness and assurance in a world that was at times extremely cruel to her. She persevered and rose above all the assumptions and prejudice. In the end her life blossomed and her words and actions came full circle. I highly suggest this book!

I really enjoyed the main character, Molly, whose outlook on life is shaped by her Neuro diversity as well as her wise grandmother . There are other delightful and not so delightful characters and the mystery of who the murderer was keeps the reader in suspense until the end. A fun read!

The main character, Molly Gray, has autism and that gives her a very distinct way of looking at the world. I'm guessing she has Asperger's because she is very logical/literal and can speak very well, but has problems understanding people's emotional cues. The book is told from Molly's viewpoint and reminded me very much of the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime in the way it showed how someone with autism sees the world.

I haven't read books in a while, this is actually the first novel I finished. I love this book so much and am writing this review right after I finished it. I loved the main character even though she frustrated me sometimes. I love how the book kinda plays into a common cliché but not really and also executing it so well. The person that was actually the culprit, you wouldn't have guess, feeding in to how invisible they really are. I love this book so much and will be giving it a second read soon! I recommend this to anyone, because I can just see so many different types of readers that like different types of things reading this book. Please read it!

In "The Maid," by Nita Prose, the main character is Molly, a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel. In the beginning of the book, I was immediately amazed at how author Nita Prose had the gift of describing the hotel in such a way that I could see its every detail and also her ability to relay each aspect of Molly's repetitive job as to make it sound fascinating, because that is the way that Molly saw it. It took me a while to catch onto the fact that trusting, reliable Molly was somewhere on the autism spectrum and definitely suffered from OCD. She was abandoned by her parents and raised by her beloved grandmother, who had recently passed away. Unfortunately, because of Molly's trusting nature, she became easy prey for unscrupulous people. For example, a past "boyfriend" has managed to steal all of the money that Molly's grandmother had saved for Molly's subsistence after her death. She cannot even pay her rent on time. Similarly, at work, some people that Molly trusts are setting her up for quite a fall in a case involving drug trafficking and murder. The doorman at the hotel and his daughter lawyer come to her defense, but the book is quite a whodunnit that the author likens to the old board game, "Clue." Molly thinks in cliches that she was taught by her grandmother, and her lack of social skills makes people misinterpret her reactions to significant events. A potential drawback for some readers is Molly's perpetual repetition of the cliches by which she lives. She is subject to ridicule, and people make fun of her behind her back. Although she turns out to be quite the heroine, a few reveals in the later chapters had me truly surprised. The book is simultaneously funny, poignant, and suspenseful. The book is accompanied by questions that a book club could use for discussion.

Five Big Stars for this debut novel and heartwarming thriller with an enormous amount of whit! I loved this story from the very first page. Our heroine, Molly, is a good and kind soul to her core. The two things she loves more than anything are her gran and her job as a maid. She strives at being the best employee she can possibly be, as her life revolves around structure and perfection for the people she serves. Molly has her struggles and knows she’s different. She lacks in social skills, is extremely awkward, and is most likely on the autism spectrum. Molly’s vulnerability and naivete draws her to people who she believes are good and true, and this ultimately leads her to becoming a suspect in a hotel murder. Trust me, this whole time you’ll be shaking your head while reading and might, possibly, want to throw the book across the room, as the police get it all wrong. This is such a well written and original novel. A rare find. You’ll have no choice but to cheer and route for the heroine because she’s just so pure and earnest.

Rating: 2.3/5There has been quite a lot of noise around this debut novel from editor-turned-author, Nita Prose, with the film rights having been snapped up quickly by Universal Studios. I also found the synopsis appealing and liked the idea of a locked-room style mystery with a quirky and engaging central character at the heart of the story.Sure enough, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the early stages of the novel. Molly is a wonderfully endearing character. She has had a sheltered upbringing with her beloved grandmother, who died a few months ago. She is socially awkward and would probably have to be described as being "on the spectrum". The values that have been instilled in Molly have led to her becoming quite idiosyncratic with moral values and a mode of speech that would generally be considered to be old-fashioned. The combination of her upbringing and innate character also means that she is often extremely naïve and open to manipulation by others.At this point the novel was shaping up to be just what I hoped it might be. I felt invested in Molly, but was prepared for her to experience some heartrending exploitation as the remainder of the story unfolded.Unfortunately, the latter sections of "The Maid" were not as satisfying as the first half of the book had given them the potential to be. From around the midway mark the overall quality showed some marked deterioration. The criminal plot is simplistic and the characterisation, aside from Molly, is disappointingly basic and two-dimensional. Even Molly's character is less convincingly handled in some of the later stages, with the actions that she takes seeming wholly inconsistent with her intrinsic values and behavioural patterns from earlier in the piece. It all becomes a bit too sickly sweet and little more than a run-of-the-mill cosy drama.

What to write about this dire book? A maid, one rung up from a simpleton, and OCD too, who lost her Gran to cancer finds herself embroiled in farcical (as in not funny) set of unbelievable coincidences which lead to - SPOLIER ALERT - her to be arrested for murder & drug dealing.Why 1*? Simple: in the court room denouement where XYX are being tried instead of our gormless protagonist ("Here's a tissue for your issue....") her feisty lady lawyer is questioning her on the stand! That's the job of the ADA or Defence Attorney in this nameless city; it's a criminal trial not a civil trial. A prosecution witness doesn't have her own defence counsel.....One is told that the author is herself a well-known publisher & editor. Well, it'll end up on Netflix / Amazon and hopefully they'll get their facts checked and lose the page after page of dross. I only finished it in order to confirm to myself just how truly awful it was.....and it was.

Absolutely loved this book. Couldn't put it down so stayed in my pyjamas until lunchtime to finish it! A wonderful character description of a person behind a job that we all take for granted, a hotel maid. This book is extremely well written and I hope it is a resounding success for the author. Wish I could give it more than 5 stars!

The first three-quarters of the book are wonderfully readable and made me think that this review would give it a five-star rating. But, sadly, the last quarter is nothing like as good.The story is told by the likeable Molly Gray, aged 25, the maid in the beautiful Regency Grand Hotel. She had been brought up by and lived with her much-loved grandmother, who had died nine months earlier. The grandmother had been a fountain of clichéd advice, which Molly constantly recalls. Memories of her grandmother are prominent throughout the book – including of the physical pain she suffered before her death, and that Molly had obeyed her wish that she should do an act of mercy-killing with a pillow at the end. This traumatic event will account for Molly’s reactions to later events.Molly loved and took pride in every detail of her work, in being an “invisible” part of the splendid hotel. She is innocent and naïve, thinks the best of people, and describes herself as socially gauche, unperceptive, making inappropriate remarks, over-explaining in answers to questions. She has an obsessive cleaning disorder. We have here an excellent portrayal of an autistic person.Everything changes for her one day when she went to the suite of rooms (401) occupied by one of the hotel’s regular guests, the well-known and wealthy property mogul, Mr Charles Black, and Giselle, his second wife.. She finds him dead in his bed, amid a cascade of pills from the bottle of Giselle, his second wife.That morning she saw a newspaper article about a row in the Black family between Mr Black and his first wife and daughter who had shares in his company which Mr Black wanted back.Stark, a woman detective has been called and wants Molly to accompany her to the police station to take a statement of what she had seen. There again Molly over-explained everything she had noticed during her duties that day, but suppressed some things that she feels might incriminate Giselle, who had always been friendly towards her and had even told her that she suffered from her husband’s tyranny.The following morning everyone at the hotel was sympathetic to Molly for the shock of her discovery, especially Rodney Stiles, the barman, who asked her for an evening meeting. Molly had always taken a fancy to him and was thrilled about this “date”. She had seen him that morning in a room she had been told was empty and which she was about to clean. Rodney was with Juan Manuel, a Mexican dishwasher in the kitchen, and with two foul-mouthed “behemoths” with shaven heads and facial tattoos. The four were disturbed to see her, and the reader immediately sees that something sinister is going on, and that Rodney was making a veiled threat to Juan Manuel; but Molly did not pick this up, even when Rodney asked her not to tell anyone that she had seen them. Rodney spun her a story which she guilelessly accepts: that he was looking after Juan Manuel, whose landlord had turned him out because he had discovered that he was an illegal immigrant, and so he had put him up in a room which he knew was empty; and Molly would do them a favour if she always told them each day which room in the hotel was empty at the time.Mr Preston, the hotel doorman, saw Rodney depart and warned Molly to be careful of him: he is a bad man.The post-mortem had shown that Black had been suffocated. There were only three pillows instead of four on the bed.The next day, Molly is put under arrest for first degree murder, and for having helped Mr Black to run a drug operation through the hotel. Stark tells her that they have interviewed many of the people at the hotel about her – and that Rodney had thought her “more than capable of murder”, at which point Molly realized how she had been betrayed by him. She was allowed to contact a lawyer and she phoned Mr Preston for help. He turned up at the police station accompanied by his daughter, Charlotte, who just happened to be a lawyer. Having heard her father’s high opinion of Molly, she posted bail for her release.It is at this point that, sadly, the book begins to disappoint. There is a sequence of events which I found difficult to follow, and which required Molly to act a part which I would not have thought she was capable of playing, but which resulted in Rodney being arrested and charged with the murder, and the charges against Molly being withdrawn.At Rodney’s trial, Molly makes a revelation for the first time which, I would have thought, would get her into trouble for having concealed it for so long. There was enough evidence against Rodney to have him sent to prison. For one thing, he had worked with Black on the drugs operation and had forced Juan Manuel, in the empty rooms, to cut the drugs – but at the end of the book we find that, even at the trial, she did not mention what she had really experienced and which would have shown who the real murderer was.But we are to believe that her behaviour at the trial had earned her a respect she was not used to. She was promoted to head maid. Juan Manuel had also done very well at the trial. Charlotte had secured a work permit for him; he moved in with Molly and they lived happily for ever afterwards.

No sex no bad language no gory murders is why I enjoyed this well written book with such a clever topicAs the maid who got her revenge in the end . I would recommend this to any book club as a very easy read.