My Five Word TL:DR Review: Good, but not my favourite

I think The Maid’s Secret may be the final chapter in Molly’s tale – although I could be wrong of course – it just reads like a conclusion with everything neatly concluded.

This is a series that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, Molly has been a delight to read about and all the hijinx at the hotel she works at have been cosy and delicious.

In this instalment things take a very different turn.  A couple of famous antique dealers are airing a show from the hotel, people come along and bring along items they think may be antique or worth some money and as an extra bonus the staff at the hotel are invited to bring something along of their own before the show airs – a little prelude if you will.  Imagine everyone’s surprise when the ‘spangly’ egg that Molly brought turns out to be a priceless antique, long lost and much debated upon.  It seems that Molly and her intended are about to go from rags to riches.  Molly becomes an overnight online sensation (much to her surprise and dismay) and the rare egg is set to be sold.  Of course, the best laid plans, etc, etc.  I won’t go further into the plot at this point.

So, my feelings when reading this.

Once again I loved the writing.  Prose has a lovely style, she’s a very easy to read author who manages to inject humour and a reasonably pacy style into her stories and, of course, Molly is such a great character.

This story is told in alternating timelines.  Surprisingly Molly comes into possession of her gran’s diary and so we flit back and forth unfolding her story from the past and then jumping forward to the current dilemma – the hope all along being that her gran’s diary might just hold the key to this most recent mystery.

I’m actually a big fan of alternating timelines and the author manages to tie everything together in a really satisfying way.

I did mention that I didn’t quite love this one as much as the first two. That could simply be because the surprise element has worn a little thin over the course of the series but I felt that Molly lost her way a little in this book.  I didn’t feel like she held centre stage in fact she came across like a different version.  Likewise her gran’s story, whilst really well written and quite compelling, didn’t sound at all like her gran – now obviously you have to understand that she’s writing about events that took place many years ago and so of course her personality has had time to change, that being said, both of them felt more like strangers to me in this book.  I think if I’d picked this up and it was the first in series I would have loved it, and I did in fact enjoy it very much, but having read the previous two books it felt like both personalities were very different.

So, to be fair, I did enjoy this, but I didn’t love it.  It didn’t wow me the way the first two books did and I missed some of the unique spark that made Molly such an instant sensation.

Overall though, a satisfying conclusion (if it is the conclusion – does anyone know?  Feel free to correct me).  And, I very much look forward to seeing where this author’s wonderful imagination will take us next.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 3.5 of 5 stars rounded to 4 for concluding such a great series in such a satisfying way