The Maid’s Secret – ARC Book Review

When a daring art heist takes place at the Regency Grand, Molly’s life is threatened. The question is who’s out to get her, and why? Long-buried secrets will be revealed in this intriguing and heartwarming novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest

A wedding. A heist. A secret.

Molly Gray’s life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. As the esteemed Head Maid and recently promoted Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, good things are just around the corner, including her marriage to her beloved fiancé, Juan Manuel, only two months away. 

But Molly’s entire existence is upended when a film crew descends upon the hotel to shoot the hit reality TV show Hidden Treasures, starring popular art appraisers Brown and Beagle. On a whim, Molly brings in a shoebox containing a few of her gran’s old things for appraisal, and much to everyone’s surprise, one item turns out to be a rare and priceless treasure. Instantly, Molly is both a multi-millionaire and a media sensation—the world’s rags-to-riches darling—until the priceless piece vanishes from the hotel in the boldest, brashest antiquities heist in recent memory.

The key to the mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about Gran’s true-to-life fairytale, a young girl to the manor born, the only child of a wealthy magnate. But when Gran falls head over heels in love with a young man her parents deem below her station, her life is thrown into turmoil. As fate would have it, the greatest love of Gran’s life is someone Molly knows quite well….

Together with her friends, Molly combs the past and the present to catch the thief before looming threats against her become real.

A spirited heist caper and an epic love story, The Maid’s Secret is a spellbinding whodunnit that will capture and warm your heart.

This is the third book of Molly the Maid series and Molly comes back with another…crime adventure.

Molly is getting married to Juan in a couple of months. When the TV crew for Hidden Treasures decided to film in the hotel Regency where Molly is working as the head maid, Molly decided on a whim to give away some of her grandmother’s cherished items. And while going through her grandmother’s stuff, the hosts, Brown and Beagle discovers an egg–not just an egg, the Faberge egg that costs millions of dollars. Molly might be on the verge of becoming a millionaire. But just as it was about to be auctioned, the egg disappears mysteriously–and someone has left a threatening note to Molly to stop looking for the egg thus threatening her life. With her infamous group–her grandfather, Detective Stark, Angela and of course her fiance, Molly must find who is responsible for the burglary for the egg.

You can never get tired of Molly’s character–she is one of those characters that you actually adore. And it is always interesting that Molly always gets into some sort of an issue and become the center of attention in a crime. I just like how supportive her staff and her fiance are to Molly. Not only that–we get a glimpse of Molly’s grandmother’s life in the story–Flora. Flora Gray was once from a wealthy family and Flora’s diary entries talks about a young girl who dreams of going to college, and the forbidden love between her and her butler’s son, John. You might not think there might be any connection between the two but towards the end, only we find that there is a connection between Flora Gray and the mysteriously stolen egg, which was revealed at the end.

This was actually interesting and I heard that this is the final premise of the Molly the Maid series. However, one downside of it was there were too much about Flora Gray than Molly–I felt like I was reading a Historical Romance with a cozy mystery setting, which kind of spoils a little bit of the overall plot. However, the author was clever enough to merge the two together which reveals the connection in the end. However, I did enjoy Flora’s POV. This was charming, entertaining and intriguing as well.

Although I didn’t like this book when comparing with the two previous book, I did enjoy reading the final book (I think) of the Molly the Maid series. I might actually miss reading about Molly as the character grew into me. Overall this book is worth four stars.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the Pan Macmillan for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.