Fantasy Book Critic: The Housekeepers by Alex Hay (Reviewed by Shazzie)

OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: Alex Hay grew up in Cambridge and Cardiff and has been writing as long as he can remember. He studied History at the University of York, and wrote his dissertation on female power at royal courts, combing the archives for every scrap of drama and skulduggery he could find. He has worked in magazine publishing and the charity sector, and is a graduate of the Curtis Brown Write Your Novel course. The Housekeepers is his debut novel and won the Caledonia Novel Award 2022. Alex lives with his husband in South East London.

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: The night of London's grandest ball, a bold group of women downstairs launch a daring revenge heist against Mayfair society in this dazzling historical novel about power, gender, and class.

Mrs. King is no ordinary housekeeper. Born into a world of con artists and thieves, she’s made herself respectable, running the grandest home in Mayfair. The place is packed with treasures, a glittering symbol of wealth and power, but dark secrets lurk in the shadows. When Mrs. King is suddenly dismissed from her position, she recruits an eclectic group of women to join her in revenge: A black market queen out to settle her scores. An actress desperate for a magnificent part. A seamstress dreaming of a better life. And Mrs. King’s predecessor, with her own desire for vengeance.

FORMAT/INFO: The Housekeepers will be published on July 6, 2023 by Headline in the U.K. and by Harlequin in the U.S.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: A daring revenge heist packed with historical detail, this book kept me flipping the pages because I was hungry for justice. I just had to know if, and how the conspirators would pull it off.

When meticulous Mrs. King, the housekeeper of the biggest, grandest park in Mayfair, is suddenly dismissed from her position by the madam of the house, Miss de Vries, due to what she calls a minor indiscretion, she doesn't go quietly. She quickly puts together a group of women who each have their own scores to settle, and concocts the most ambitious revenge plan: to infiltrate the house and empty it of all its contents and valuables, right on the night Miss de Vries conducts a big ball to make an impression on society.

So here's my problem with such grand premises: they seem over the top ambitious, and extremely hard to pull off. I'm always worried that I will end the book without being convinced of the way it ended. But about fifty pages into this book, I didn't care much about that, and that's because Alex Hay created a bunch of characters that pop off the page, each with a personal situation that moved me enough to want revenge for each of them.

While it is Mrs. King that gets maximum page time, all the women's backgrounds are clearly explained, and the unfairness of their lives is presented with great clarity. The narration does not happen in a linear timeline, but rather in what I call an effective-for-the-story timeline, in which the author reveals bits and pieces of information as the story progresses, to create a well-rounded understanding of the journeys that each of them had. I found this to be a major factor in my enjoyment of the novel, because if not for this, how could I believe that a bunch of ecletic women got together to try to not just pull off a job so big, but that it was also planned for the day the house hosted the biggest party of the year?

As Miss de Vries prepares for the party, and the women prepare to do their bit, the tension on the story goes up at a constant pace, every bit of it a reminder that it would take a small misstep for the entire plan to come crashing down. I couldn't help but sympathise with Miss de Vries, stuck in a world that allows for such little social mobility. She might try hard, but no matter her inheritence, all the glamorous things in her house, she would never move to a different class, thus her desperation to marry into any family that might have her. Moving as it was, it did not distract me from wanting the downstairs women to succeed, for each of their interactions and perspectives showed the stifling world they lived in, and the discoveries that they made in the days that led up to the ball served to renew my desire to see them succeed.

Thoughout the book, it is shown that Miss King is thoroughly prepared to scrub the house clean, and carefully dispose of the items that they made away with. What really did put a damper on my enjoyment was that not all parts of the execution of the heist were clear on page, and some of it was indeed vague enough that I only remember it being pulled off despite some stray actions by some of the women.

CONCLUSION: Though a little rough at the end, this is a book I recommend to readers looking for something fresh for the genre. The Housekeepers is a fun, fast-paced gripping historical heist with a group of characters that you can't help but sympathise with, and root for.