Molly the maid’s past did not feature very prominently in the previous book. We are given hints as to her growing up with her grandmother, but the details were only about their conversations and not about other things. One can actually pick this book up without having read the first.
There is a new maid in training who lacks Moll’s confidence but has other traits which did not help our lead protagonist make sense of the world around her. We go back in time, in an almost dual timeline narrative featuring the man who ends up dead in the hotel. This time around, it all happens in front of everyone and another maid is a suspect.
The investigation is more perfunctory in this, since there are secrets that might implicate other people. It also moves faster than before with Molly accusing people and figuring out her mistakes almost immediately.
I actually enjoyed this book more than the previous one. Our protagonist’s quirks and sympathy for a past where she had just had one person understand her continued to grow on me. I would recommend this series, or even this book to people who like odd central characters.
I would not have guessed the culprit, but given the information we are, it is easier to pick up red herrings than actual predictions. I wonder what the next book will do to shift the narrative.
I received an ARC thanks to Netgalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
Superfluous Reading 