3 out of 5 stars
I'll start by saying that I enjoyed this book, but was not able to give it more than three stars.
When I read a mystery, I like to look at it as a puzzle. Part of the fun for me is figuring out who are the good guys, who are just pretending to be good, who are the likely suspects and why, and who are the unlikely suspects. What are the connections between the characters that may come into play. In the case of The Maid, by Nita Prose, I was not able to do this. The plot was a good one. Molly the maid finds a dead body in one of the rooms she is cleaning and ends up being the prime suspect in the murderer. It wasn't that pace of the story, or the lack of twists, there were plenty of those. It wasn't even that I was able to figure out the puzzle too easily, although I did figure most of it out, including who was the actual killer, early in the book.
The big thing for me was the characters. Unlike most of my book buddies, I was not able to really connect with the maim character, Molly. Instead of the sympathetic character that most saw her as, to me she just seemed pathetic. The investigating detective to me seemed mean and rigid in her thinking, with a total lack of empathy, which made it hard for me to have any empathy for her. The dead man's wife just seemed shallow, as did a number of the other characters. It turns out that I just had a hard time connecting with any of the character. That said, I think I am the only one of the people I know who has read this book that thought it was just okay. And the book is showing up on quite a lot of "must read" lists in websites and blogs that I follow, so I figure I must just be missing something.
I do want to thank the publisher for making this book available on Netgalley and giving me a chance to read and review it. I enjoyed the book and I'm not sorry I read it, but for me it was an average read.
When I read a mystery, I like to look at it as a puzzle. Part of the fun for me is figuring out who are the good guys, who are just pretending to be good, who are the likely suspects and why, and who are the unlikely suspects. What are the connections between the characters that may come into play. In the case of The Maid, by Nita Prose, I was not able to do this. The plot was a good one. Molly the maid finds a dead body in one of the rooms she is cleaning and ends up being the prime suspect in the murderer. It wasn't that pace of the story, or the lack of twists, there were plenty of those. It wasn't even that I was able to figure out the puzzle too easily, although I did figure most of it out, including who was the actual killer, early in the book.
The big thing for me was the characters. Unlike most of my book buddies, I was not able to really connect with the maim character, Molly. Instead of the sympathetic character that most saw her as, to me she just seemed pathetic. The investigating detective to me seemed mean and rigid in her thinking, with a total lack of empathy, which made it hard for me to have any empathy for her. The dead man's wife just seemed shallow, as did a number of the other characters. It turns out that I just had a hard time connecting with any of the character. That said, I think I am the only one of the people I know who has read this book that thought it was just okay. And the book is showing up on quite a lot of "must read" lists in websites and blogs that I follow, so I figure I must just be missing something.
I do want to thank the publisher for making this book available on Netgalley and giving me a chance to read and review it. I enjoyed the book and I'm not sorry I read it, but for me it was an average read.
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