The Maid

2/5 Stars

Molly is a maid in a prestigious hotel. She takes her job very seriously and values cleanliness and order above almost everything. She’s different though and the world treats her as such. She doesn’t pick up on the nuances of conversation and no one seems to understand her. When one of her regular guests is found dead at the hotel, Molly’s life is turned upside down. Will she be able to clear her name or will the world continue to ignore her like before?

Firstly, this was categorized as a thriller by my library and it definitely was not. A slow-burn mystery perhaps, but not thrilling. I had seen so much hype about this book and went into without reading the book jacket summary (my usual M.O.). I was frustrated to find that Molly is a person with autism, but the way she was written made me uncomfortable. I was already uneasy because the marginalized protagonist is written by an author that is not part of the group (not that I’ve found while researching anyway). Molly reads as such too. She embodies a lot of traits found with autism but it didn’t feel authentic and instead felt like a stereotype. Other characters were also stereotypical and some might even consider it borderline offensive. 

The plot was slow and lackluster. While this was a mystery, I had it solved very quickly. I don’t know if there were really supposed to be twists. Instead, this was a fiction about Molly trying to clear her name as a person with autism and practically no one realizing she is neurodivergent. I wasn’t sure how this was realistic. 

Overall, I wasn’t impressed. It was whimsical as others described, but when reading a mystery with a protagonist on the spectrum, I was hoping for some actual mystery and genuine representation. I’m not understanding the hype around this one, but maybe it’s just me.