I have very mixed feelings about The Maid. On the surface, it is a quirky mystery that leaves you hooked until the end. It was an engaging read. So that is positive. 

 

If I stuck to the surface I would enjoy the book very much and move on with my life. But I won’t. Partly because it isn’t me and partly because The Maid is actually harmful in its rep. 

 

The mystery -I was left guessing until the end. All my guesses were absolutely wrong. That should be a sign of a good mystery. In this case, I do not think the book actually foretold the ending. In retrospect, it just didn’t add up. Not because it wasn’t possible, but because there was not that development. 

 

Now for the rep - Molly the maid is autistic-like. Sure they don’t come out and say she is autistic because then they would have to do research and sensitivity reading. But they imply she is autistic and that is what readers will take away. The rep is wrong. See the problem is that the author took the outward autistic quarks and internalized them. So all those stereotypes that neurotypicals blame us for, she put them as the internal monologue. Spoiler - we don’t f’ing think like that inside our heads. Sure we may appear robotic, but in our head, we are an emotional anxious mess. And she completely missed the mark. 

 

There was a brief hope that she was going to make Molly a sociopath. Then the rep would have worked, but she didn’t. No, she just made her fake autistic character sociopathic and that is very ablest and dangerous for actual autistic people. 

 

I wanted to love this book. But I can’t. How can I love a book that makes fun of who I am but expects me to be ok with it because they didn’t actually say the word autism? Guess my feelings aren’t so mixed after all.