This guide to the Molly the Maid book series by Nita Prose explores dusting—and dusting for fingerprints! Neurodivergent hotel maid Molly’s eccentric social skills make it challenging, yet interesting, for her to exonerate herself from involvement in suspicious hotel deaths.
Here, you’ll unravel Molly’s apron strings and uncover what makes cozy mystery lovers “sweep up” books about Molly in this famous book series. So, grab your feather duster, and let’s get into the nooks and crannies!
Molly The Maid Book Series: Order of the Mystery Quartet
Molly the Maid series consists of three novels and one novella by Nita Prose:
- The Maid (2022)
- The Mystery Guest: A Maid Novel (2023)
- The Mistletoe Mystery: A Maid Novella (2024)
- The Maid’s Secret: A Maid Novel (April 8, 2025)
READING ORDER TIP: To avoid spoilers, the books in the Molly the Maid book series by Nita Prose should be read in order. The second book references what happened in the first book.
About Molly the Maid Series
- Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
- Genre: “cozy mystery”
- Setting: the Grand Regency Hotel
Themes Molly the Maid Explores
- family
- diversity
- inclusion
- class
- ethics
- perseverance
- friendship
- personal growth
These themes are explored through the main characters, whose names are bolded for you to track in the summaries and reviews below.
The Maid (Book 1 of 4)
Summary (Without Spoilers)
In The Maid, Molly Gray is a young hotel maid at the five-star Grand Regency Hotel. Despite her love for her job, she struggles with social skills like communication and interpretation, especially since her beloved Gran died.
Her life and career are upended when she enters the suite of a wealthy guest (and abusive husband), Charles Black, only to find him dead. In an attempt to be helpful to her co-worker crush, Rodney, and Black’s wife, Giselle (her friend), her unique mannerisms lead her to become the lead suspect, under arrest for a whole host of charges, including murder.
Molly is smarter than her social skills imply. But, her only hope is that those around her will figure out what happened to Mr. Black, including the doorman, Mr. Preston, and his lawyer daughter, Charlotte. The people in this quirky woman’s life must rally to support her.
The killer in The Maid by Nita Prose was the first Mrs. Black — Mr. Black’s wife before Giselle. She entered the hotel room to find him drugged and violent, and she suffocated him with a pillow. Molly interacted with and ultimately protected her because Molly found a kinship in this action “for the greater good.”
Review
Is it odd to call a murder mystery book heartwarming?! This Clue-like mystery was oddly light and charming, and it works well for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.
The twists also kept coming as Molly came of age in truly unprecedented ways. It left the reader wanting more about Molly’s background.
I didn’t love it as much as the general population of readers, as some of Molly’s choices require the reader to tread some morally grey waters. But, this is also what makes it a great book club pick. And, Molly is undeniably one-of-a-kind.
The Mystery Guest (Book 2 of 4)
Summary (Without Spoilers)
The Mystery Guest is the sequel in which Molly the Maid is back. She’s the head maid and has a boyfriend, but… another guest is dead at the Regency Grand Hotel, where she works.
It just so happens that Molly gave the famous mystery author, J.D. Grimthorpe, tea before he died. So, once again, she becomes a suspect in his mysterious death.
But other suspects also emerge. Many, including Molly herself, share sordid pasts with the author. “Secrets never keep,” so all is revealed by the novel’s end.
Review
I read The Mystery Guest in 24 hours and enjoyed it far more than The Maid! The reader learns much more about Molly’s, Gran’s, and Mr. Preston’s pasts. The secret life of a mysterious author is always especially intriguing as a book lover.
While in The Maid, Molly was often compared to Eleanor from Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, I found her to be more like Elizabeth Zott in Lessons in Chemistry in The Mystery Guest. She’s highly intelligent and literal to a fault. Since I love Zott, I also love Molly here.
While I had suspicions about whodunnit (and was right), I still got to learn why. Many other aspects of Molly’s life came full circle in this mystery. I do not doubt that fans of The Maid will delight in it.
Reading Tip: The audiobook was exceptionally narrated.
The Mistletoe Mystery (Book 3 of 4)
Summary (Without Spoilers)
In the short novella The Mistletoe Mystery, Molly celebrates the season with Juan Manuel, but the Hotel’s Secret Santa exchange makes her suspicious of him.
Review
The Mistletoe Mystery is a holiday treat for fans of Molly. It can be read in about an hour, and it maintains a festive tone while also moving the overarching plot of the series along.
Note that there’s no big Hotel mystery to solve here, but it’s still a delight. Readers will love the ending!
The Maid’s Secret (Book 4 of 4)
About The Maid’s Secret (Publication Date: April 8, 2025), from the publisher:
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.
About Author Nita Prose
about
Nita Prose is a long-time Canadian editor and recent author whose 2022 debut novel, The Maid, became a smash hit, selling over one million copies and winning a variety of awards.
Molly the Maid Movie Adaptation News
Little Women actress Florence Pugh is set to star in the movie adaptation of The Maid for Universal.
Recap
The Molly the Maid book series by Nita Prose contains three cozy mystery novels and one novella about a neurodivergent hotel maid who finds herself at the center of the suspicious deaths of hotel guests.
To avoid spoilers, these books are best read in order:
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remember, it’s a good day to read a book. – jules
