My Review of "The Maid's Diary" by Loreth Anne White

 

The Maid's Diary by Loreth Anne White
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story definitely has some twists in it. No spoilers, but it was getting to be near the end when a gigantic twist is revealed. Normally I see things coming, but this twist caught me by surprise. There is someone pulling all the strings, and they did it with panache. Another thing I liked about this book is that all of the characters in it are very three-dimensional, with complex backgrounds and skeletons in their closets. It leads the reader to wonder just who the bad guy is, and maybe the worst aren't actually the murderer.

White tells the tale from five points of view, which actually worked out okay. Stories with too many POVs can sometimes get a bit lost, but she held it together. But one thing that I found less than ideal was that there were two chronological storylines going at once: the "before the murder" storyline, told from the points of view of the three main protagonists involved in the crime, and the "after the murder" storyline, which is told from the POV of one of the detectives. I don't much care for jumping back and forth between chronologies like this, but I can see why the author did it: to put the reader into the mindsets of those involved in the crime, and the the other to piece the crime together afterward. Then it all comes together in the end. But not really my thing. The other thing that I didn't exactly love was how White uses "third person present tense" for everything other than the maid's (Kit's) diary entries. Again, I can see why she did it -- to put the reader in the moment -- but it doesn't lend itself to emotional storytelling, and sometimes the text read more like a police report and less like something I could get emotionally attached to.

Another thing that REALLY bothered me was that the author threw the reader a red herring at the end, which is typical for mystery stories (where there are many), but the one at the end was WAY too convenient to have me believe it. I can't say more without spoiling, but it involved the snooping old lady next door to the murder scene, and it had me rolling my eyes in annoyance. For this reason I wish I could drop from a rating of 4 to a 3.5, but half-stars aren't something I can put here.

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