Snow asked when I showed up for the work the day after Gran died. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Mr. Preston told me that your grandmother passed away yesterday. I already called in a replacement for your shift. I assumed you’d take today off.”

“Mr. Snow, why did you assume?” I asked. “When you assume, you make an A-S-S out of U and ME.”

Mr. Snow looked like he was going to regurgitate a mouse. “Please accept my condolences. And are you sure you don’t want the day off?”

“It was Gran who died, not me,” I replied.

Nita Snow’s debut novel, The Maid, has become the most talked-about release of January, 2022, garnering attention months in advance. Now that I’ve read it, I can see why. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book will be available to the public Tuesday, January 4, 2022.

Molly Gray is twenty-five years old, and has been raised by her grandmother, who worked as a maid for a wealthy family. She taught Molly to be a meticulous cleaner, and so in her professional duties at the Regency Hotel, she takes pride in her work. She loves her clean, starched uniform. She loves returning every hotel room she cleans “to a state of perfection.” And best of all, she knows exactly what to say to people, what to do with her hands, with her eyes…there are clear expectations for every maid on staff, and Molly, who is clueless socially and knows it, loves fitting in, becoming virtually invisible.

When Gran dies, Molly loses not only the sole member of her family, but she also lost her only companion and friend. For months now, she’s gone home to a quiet house, and she’s so lonely that she calls out that she’s home, even though there isn’t so much as a goldfish to hear her.

The poor dear.

But Molly’s carefully ordered world changes when she finds Mr. Black dead in his bed. The Blacks are regular guests at the hotel, and Giselle Black has become a friend of sorts for Molly. Mr. Black is a nasty customer; Molly has seen bruises on Giselle. Nevertheless, his lifeless form face-up in his bed is a shock. More shocking still is the discovery that she herself is a person of interest in this crime.

It’s about this point where I become distracted. Where the heck are we? At first, I believed we were somewhere in England, because everybody drinks tea all the time, and the restroom or bathroom is always the “washroom.” But then I notice that the cops operate similarly to those in the U.S., and everyone pays for things with dollars, not pounds. The book’s synopsis doesn’t say where we are, and no other reviewers say anything, either. Finally, I take a closer look at the author’s profile, and it says she lives in Toronto. Aha! So, I’m guessing we are in Toronto also, or at least someplace in Canada.

Molly is a compelling character, and her aloneness makes her all the easier to bond with. I’m a gran myself, and I want to sit down with her (coffee, not tea, please,) and explain a few things to her. It’s not so much the locked room mystery that keeps the pages turning for me–I don’t care what happened to Mr. Black, but I’m in this thing for Molly. She cherishes this job, has given her brief adult life to it, and now somebody is trying to throw her under the bus. It makes me boil. How will she get out of this mess?

Ultimately, however, this is a feel-good story, and with the world in the state it’s in, every single one of us needs one of those. Highly recommended to everyone that enjoys excellent fiction.