The Maid - Nita Prose (2022)

When I was looking at books to add to my 2022 TBR shelf, I skipped over this one multiple times. I'm not really into contemporary mysteries at the moment, unless there's a unique or unusual hook to it, which was not the case here, plus the main character being described as "not like everyone else" because she struggles with social situations just screamed overdone quirkiness and second-hand embarrassment, which, again I'm not really into. But then I found out that there's a movie adaptation on the way with Florence Pugh playing the lead, and since I already know I'm going to watch that, I figured I better read the book first.

Unfortunately, my initial fears were entirely justified. Molly is... well, there's no need to sugarcoat it: she's annoying as all hell. Aggravating, even. I'm not certain what the author's intentions were, since it's never actually spelled out if she's autistic or not, but either way I don't think it was done well. In fact, for the first few chapters, I had this weird feeling like I've read this exact character before, her turns of phrase and way of speaking were so familiar, and then it hit me: she's exactly like Klara the android in Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun. And, well, depicting your maybe-autistic character as essentially a robot is probably not a good idea. Every time she went on about "returning rooms to a state of perfection" I could feel myself getting more annoyed, and if I was super upset and crying and someone came up to me and said "a tissue for your issue"... well, I don't even know how I would react. I realize this might come off as harsh but for most of the book I was so annoyed with the character that I find it hard to be charitable.

The mystery aspect of the novel was also paper-thin, even with the "big twist" thrown in at the end, which didn't make much sense anyway. Here's the thing: if your protagonist's two main characteristics are overexplaining every single detail and not grasping the importance of pretty obvious stuff, for her to suddenly go like "here's in fact all the important details I deliberately concealed from the reader" in the very last chapter is pretty damn cheap. But I guess I have to give props to the author for not going with the twist I thought she would, which would have been even worse. Damn modern mystery books for making me try to figure out what the twist is going to be from practically the first page.

I didn't enjoy this book much, and the only reason I might recommend it is that it's straightforward and pretty well-written, so even when the main character is being unbelievably annoying (which is always), you can at least fly through it pretty fast without getting bogged down in unnecessary descriptions and flowery metaphors. That's not nothing. But I'm afraid I really don't know how any movie could be made from this that won't be considered at least mildly offensive, without massive changes to plot and character. Poor Florence Pugh is about to catch so much shit for taking a role "belonging" to an autistic actress... just you wait.

The Foundling - Ann Leary (2021)

It's not often that an author's foreword already makes me raise my eyebrows, which is exactly what happened here, and it made me a little concerned about the book before I even truly began. Here, let me share the things that made me say, "hold on... what the fuck?" before the story even started. The author starts with a broad-strokes introduction to the history of Laurelton State Village for Feeble-minded Women of Childbearing Age, an institution where women who were deemed "mentally or morally defective" (that is, anything from being a lesbian or a prostitute to simply a woman who wasn't obedient to her husband) were imprisoned so that they couldn't bring more children with similar "defects" into the world. Lovely. She then continues:

"At the helm of this profitable public institution was a fascinating superintendent named Dr. Mary Wolfe. Dr. Wolfe had earned a medical degree when few women went to college. She was one of our nation's first female psychiatrists, an outspoken leader of the women's suffrage movement of the 1910s, and a brilliant public speaker. She was an early feminist, a crusader for women's civil rights, and an advocate for the health and welfare of women. At first glance, it was easy for me to see why my grandmother would want to work for such an intelligent, modern-thinking woman."

I'm sorry??? You just said all that about the institution and yet you think the woman who literally founded it was in any way an advocate for women's health? I know that "women's rights" back then were not exactly the same as we would define them today, but still... this is a pretty big leap... and then on the next page she quotes another passage "written by another celebrated feminist, a champion of women's reproductive rights, and also, like many other progressives of her era, an avid eugenicist". At this point I was utterly confused. Segregating women so they could literally not have children on the off chance that they would turn out "defective" is literally the opposite of championing women's reproductive rights. At least the blurb of the book mentioned something about the institution's dark secrets coming to light, so I didn't think the author was actually suggesting that these ideas were good or the women who espoused them worthy of praise. But the way all of it was worded... I went into the book with more apprehension than excitement after this foreword.

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir - Jennifer Ryan (2017)

I'll preface this review with the admission that I'm not exactly a fan of this very specific sub-genre of historical fiction that this book belongs to, which I like to call "World War II was really hard on women". I very much like World War II stories since I find the era and the history fascinating, but if I'd have to choose I'd much prefer to read about the soldiers fighting the actual wars, and not one of the millions of books about how the people (that is, women) left behind are faring, at least one of which seems to be released every week. And look, I don't want to downplay the experiences of real people. Obviously WWII was horrible for everyone involved, no matter where they were at the time, or what they were doing. But what started out as a well intentioned effort to tell the tales of these "unsung heroes", as women of this era are usually seen, has turned into an incredibly overdone and played out topic, in my opinion. Just look at Goodreads' own WWII page to see what I mean. There's really not much else to tell here and now the only time I mark one of these books as Want to Read is if there's a really unexpected hook in the synopsis, like an unusual location, or an exciting-sounding mystery. So for this reason I don't think Chilbury would have caught my eye had I encountered it now, but it's been on my Kindle for years from back when I was a lot less selective, and it so happened that I was really bored of my reading choices towards the end of last year and decided to let a random number generator decide what I'm going to read next. And when it fell to this book, I was happy to dive in, thinking, what the hell, it's an incredibly popular and well rated book, I'll probably just simply enjoy it.