Molly Gray is an excellent maid. She might not always understand other people’s facial expressions but she excels at “returning rooms to a state of perfection” at the Regency Grand Hotel. Since her Gran died a few months ago, Molly’s been navigating the world on her own. She thinks she’s doing okay until the day she goes in to clean a hotel room and finds the body of one of the Regency Grand’s most prestigious guests.
This seemed like the kind of innocuous, cosy mystery that I could enjoy and the author will be in town this summer for our local Writers Festival so I picked up a copy from the library. Unfortunately, my overall impression of The Maid (which is the first in a series) is simply that it was boring. Molly is twenty-five and has always lived a simple life of routine with her grandmother. She has continued this routine after her grandmother’s death and, in a way, she thrives within it. She’s very good at her job and she enjoys it. She has some longterm goals and gets along with her coworkers. She doesn’t really have friends or any imagination and it’s clear that she needs a change in her life but I was willing to follow along for that. At first I was bothered by the fact that Molly seems clearly autistic but the word is never used in the book. But as the story progressed, I was glad the book didn’t label Molly. Because the further we got, the less I thought Molly was autistic and the more I began to think Molly was just kind of dumb.
A big problem here is that the story is told in first person narration with all of the information coming from Molly. So we witness what she witnesses and it’s pretty easy to figure out what’s actually going on and who the bad guys really are but Molly never does. It’s one thing to not be great at decoding facial expressions and it’s a completely other thing to need everything spelled out the way Molly does. There’s actually very little nuance in the story as to who is good and who is bad and even in this black-and-white world, Molly is unable to figure it out.
I hate to trash what is, in the end, a fairly inoffensive book. Plenty of people have enjoyed this book and this series. I didn’t struggle to read it or to finish it and I have no care to read anything further about Molly the Maid.
Karissa Reads Books 
…do we have any indicators for why Molly seems so ignorant? Is it her home life, school life, a lack of curiosity…? I’ve never read a book in which the main character was just straight up dumb, lol.
I think she’s intended to be naive but it comes across as dumb. She’s shown to be quite clever in some ways and she’s very good at her job. But she’s supposed to be so naive as to human nature that she comes across as very childlike. But she’s in her 20s so it doesn’t really make sense.
I didn’t read this one but I attempted to read the second book in the series and had a very similar reaction to it. I thought the way the author treated Molly’s autism was really almost offensive, in that she seemed to be setting Molly up to be laughed at. I abandoned it about a third of the week through.
Third of the way through! Why do we never spot typos till after we’ve pressed send… 😉
I knew what you meant!
I don’t blame you. I’m glad someone else felt the same because a lot of people seem to love this series and I just don’t get it!
I’m one of those who enjoyed it. True, it did lag at times, but I still liked it. Is the series a must read for me? Not really, but I do have the Xmas one saved on my shelf for December 🙂
That’s fair! Thinking it over a couple weeks after reading the book, I think if I had come into it without expectations or at a time when I just wanted a simple and cozy read, I might have enjoyed it more. Christmas would probably be a great time! I am curious to hear Prose talk about the book and if that changes my perspective at all.
I’ve heard her talk about it actually, and she said the voice of the main character just came to her one day when she was flying on a plane. I feel like only a true writer would have that happen to them LOL
I’m actually really looking forward to hearing her talk about the series and I feel like it will make me more sympathetic to the whole thing. Sometimes hearing the author’s process can cast a whole new light on the reading of a book.