The Maid

A semi-cozy mystery with a lot of heart but also without being too sugar-coated idyllic. Hovering between 4 and 4.5 because I can't decide. I thoroughly enjoyed this one from start to finish, with an endearing protagonist that I was rooting for almost from the very beginning. This book also touched some of my soft spots and made me tear up a few times, though it's not meant to be anything of a tearjerker.

Molly Gray is as unassuming as her name. She works as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, a dream job for her since her passion in life is cleaning up. Everything seems to be almost idyllic at the Regency Grand until one day Molly goes in to clean the suite of Charles Black, one of the hotel's richest and most important guests, only to discover him dead on the bed.

As a protagonist and the first person narrator through which we experience the story, Molly is as endearing as they come. She talks about how she's not so good at reading social cues and body language and tends to take things literally, which seems to likely put her somewhere on the spectrum. Though the story never explicitly says so, it's only all too obvious from other characters' reception of her as well as the various behavior that Molly exhibits that she's meant to be a neurodivergent character. As a neurotypical reader, I cannot speak to how authentic or accurate this portrayal of ND people is so I won't touch on that,. I understand that the author is herself neurotypical as well.

Nevertheless, I found Molly endearing in her kindness and the immense love between herself and her Gran. Molly is one of those people who want to see the world and the people in it as inherently good unless proven otherwise, and that sometimes made me feel so bad for her. I occasionally wanted to scream at her for not seeing how other characters were manipulating her, but I was always rooting for her from the beginning, and I'm usually pretty blase about protagonists in general.

The mystery itself was fairly simple. At first Charles Black's death was suspected to be of natural causes, but soon we learn that the death as well as the entire hotel itself is not quite what it seems. While Molly is our central protagonist and we experience the story through her eyes, she isn't exactly an investigator and doesn't do any active sleuthing. She isn't passive per se, but she also isn't going to be the sleuthing star of her own cozy mystery series anytime soon. The mystery is resolved by other people while Molly simply follows the instructions requested of her to usher the case to a close.

What really shines through in this book is the human relationships, both past and present, that Molly mulls about, reminisces on, or forges throughout the book. Of particular note is her relationship with her grandma, revealed to us through timely flashbacks and which brought tears to my eyes.

Thoughts on the ending: I thought the book could've ended well enough with Rodney getting arrested and then charged with the murder of Black. Everything that happened after that sent me into a tail spin.I'm really not sure how I felt about the reveal that Molly was the unwitting accomplice in essentially euthanizing her grandma. It kinda put a bit of a dent in the perfect relationship between them that I was enjoying thus far. Not so much on Molly's part but on Gran's for asking her granddaughter to do such a thing and continue living with the trauma of having committed such an action. That sounds completely out of character for such a sweet character like Gran to have asked Molly to do. And then also the final reveal that Black's Murderer was in fact his ex-wife. I didn't mind this reveal so much but I was very confused how Molly could reveal that much in a courtroom and then get away with not revealing who the figure was. At the very least I would expect the police to have to reopen investigations into the murder. And why would she withhold that information right to the end? If she was trying to protect the first Mrs Black, then why say it at all? If she wasn't, then why not volunteer that earlier? Why at that specific moment when Rodney was just about to get convicted, an outcome that I'd assume Molly would've wanted. Also, why did Giselle send her that last cheque out of nowhere? I actually expected that it had been her who murdered Black and that Molly was now blackmailing her. I was just so confused.

Overall, this was still a fun and easy read, highly recommended for anyone looking for a cozy or light hearted mystery.