Buckle in for an unpopular opinion.
Molly the maid, works at a hotel, as you guessed, it a maid. Molly loves her job as a Maid and getting to ‘return rooms to a state of perfection’ is the highlight of her day. She loves keeping things clean and her attention to detail makes her perfect at what she does. But Molly is different, and while Prose doesn’t come out an say it, she’s very much on the spectrum. She can’t read faces, has trouble with body language, and really any stereotype you can think of for someone with autism, Molly has.
Character wise, Molly was too much for me. As someone who has studied a bit (and I mean the tiniest bit) about autism and interactive with a handful of folks who also have autism, I felt that she just threw all the stereotypes out there. Honestly, if she would have just thrown it in somewhere, anywhere that Molly even might be on the spectrum, I would feel slightly mollified. I get that Molly’s innocence, her condition, or lack of street smarts is suppose to make her enduring to the reader, but the Molly character just wasn’t enough to carry the story and the way she was written didn’t appeal to me in the least.
Plot wise, it’s interesting but I just couldn’t care about it enough or our main character to justify recommending it. I was the slightest bit surprised by the very last plot twist but once again it’s a lot to get to that point with not enough reward in my opinion.
This was one of my Winter 2022 Most Anticipated Reads, and while the premise sounds great I just did not really enjoy this one. It reads more like a ‘cozy’ mystery, which I’m not a fan of. If you like slow paced, character centric cozy mysteries than you might enjoy this one.
The Maid comes out January 4, 2022. Huge thank you to Ballantine Books and Random House for my copy in exchange for my honest review. If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my Instagram @speakingof_books.
I loved the maid and I actually work with many people who fall on the autism spectrum. Unfortunately I think it’s you who has a stereotypical view of people with ASD. molly was the perfect example of someone who has a possible ASD diagnosis as she is written as someone’s who is just as typical any neuro typical person. And she falls no where near Monk who actually was diagnosed with OCD.