Twenty-five year old Molly Gray struggles with social cues. She does well with routine, repetition and rules. She takes things pretty much at face value and misunderstands hidden, vague or complex meanings others might direct her way. Without her beloved grandmother to help her navigate through the social hurdles, Molly sometimes finds herself at a loss. Others that also work at the fancy hotel where she is a maid, often smirk and laugh at her behind her back. However, she is not the idiot some of her co-workers at the hotel take her for. She is actually quite smart. But she hides herself in her work, taking pride in following all the rules her employer lays out and doing her job to the best of her ability. When attending to the suites of one of the regular wealthy patrons to finish up her work , Molly finds not the clean orderly suite she left a few hours ago. It is in total disarray and the body of Mr. Black is dead in his bed. Molly soon finds herself in the cross hairs of the detective in charge. But as the detective tries to pin Molly, friends she didn't know she had come to her aid to help her prove her innocence, but can she trust any of them to help her find the real killer?
This was a fun and quirky read that kept me turning the pages and kept me pretty much engaged through the story. Molly is quite the character and I found her charming in her language, using words and phrases continually through the story to "talk" to herself in the old fashioned way that her beloved deceased grandmother would have talked to her. After her grandmother passed away Molly really found herself struggling to make sense of things and loneliness was her companion as she now lived alone in the tiny apartment she had shared with her. While Molly's personality and issues really sucked in my emotions and made me really feel for her some parts of the story were a bit on the unbelievable side to me. Molly misses and misreads the simplest of social cues and situations yet can think through and discern other's motivations. The two somehow didn't jive together for me. The story was enjoyable right up to the very end where the plot twist didn't make sense to me considering the personality of Molly that had been established.
But it was enjoyable and fun escape read for the most part and so I gave it a rating of 7.5/10
Reading Goals Met: Book purchased in 2020-2022
2 comments:
the character in The Maid sounds as though the author has her being on the Autism Spectrum Disorder. Many children with Aspergers (high end of Autism...meaning highest functioning) are like this character's description. Not a book I've been interested in but you gave it a great review! I've known several people who have read it and some loved it and others not so much.
ok I just googled some info on the novel "the Maid" and up came the info that YES the author intended for her to be on the autism spectrum with the complicaton of OCD. i have MANY students like this, this current school year!!
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