“The Maid,” by Nita Prose, follows a quirky 25-year-old maid named Molly who lives for cleaning.

Molly won’t leave her apartment or hotel room without everything perfectly spotless.

She was raised by her grandmother, and the things that her grandmother told her throughout her childhood stick with her through the rest of her future.

Everything seems to be going well for Molly, until one day she is assigned to clean Mr. Black’s hotel room.

Molly sees that the room isn’t in great shape and looks trashed, with mysterious blue crushed up pills on the carpet, broken glass and clothes scattered all around the room, but most importantly, she finds Mr.Black dead on the bed!

Then, for the rest of the week, Molly uncovers the unknown about the hotel, and learns that everyone is carrying secrets.

There are plenty of puns and funny aspects of the book while at the same time, it contains many inspirational quotes that can sometimes even correlate to the story’s plot.

Many of the quotes are from Molly’s deceased grandmother known as “Gran.” She has lines such as, “I’ll never understand it–why people find the truth more shocking than lies.” And, “That’s how friendship is built, one small truth at a time.”

Molly undergoes significant development through the book, realizing that trust can only go so far with someone until getting hurt becomes one of the outcomes.

Furthermore, Molly learns that this valuable lesson is woven into many of the quotes stated by Gran throughout the book.

At the end of the story, the atmosphere of the hotel becomes even more eerie, as the secrets of the hotel and the people that work there slowly start to unveil.

As the classic ‘who done it’ cliche plays into the plot, the reader observes the trust that Molly’s coworkers have in each other starts to wane.

I enjoyed “The Maid,” uniquely for the plot and the way that Prose describes how astonishingly partial Molly is to her cleaning. She views cleaning moreso as a passion, and less as a service completed for a paycheck, as one might presume a maidi vews cleaning.

What particularly stood out yo me in the story was Prose’s humorous obsession with Olive Garden.

Most of the drama revolving around Molly ando Rodney’s (Molly’s love interest) relationship takes place at Olive Garden, and will most likely make me think about it whenever I take my next trip to the Italian restaurant.

Despite the enjoyably distinctive aspects of the story, I would have liked to have seen more from the author regarding the way the killer killed Mr. Black.

I feel that most of the enjoyable aspects of a murder mystery novel emerge from the way the author tricks the reader’s mind with the sequence of events leading up to a character’s death. But after the ‘big reveal’ in this novel, I was left feeling burnt out and unsatisfied.

I felt as if Prose represented less potential than what she had.

But in all, the story is a great cheesy murder mystery novel for someone who wants a quick read, with not too heavy of a plot.

“The Maid,” made it to the Good Morning America,” book club and is a #1 New York Times bestseller, despite the book coming out only last year.