The Housekeepers by Alex Hay - Book Review

Publication Date: 06th July 2023

Genre: Historical Fiction

3 Stars 

One Liner: Doesn’t reach its full potential 

1905, London 

Mrs. King isn’t a regular housekeeper. She has other talents in dealing with items, sellers, auctions, and buyers in the black market. When Mrs. King is dismissed from her position at the House of de Vries, the largest property in the region, she decides to pull off a heist of a lifetime. 

After all, the house is brimming with artifacts, art pieces, and all things precious. She recruits different women (and men) to play their parts and rob the house of every possession when the year’s most anticipated costume ball is happening downstairs. 

Mrs. King also has a plan of her own, an extension to the original, where she needs to find something and settle the scores. However, the house has too many dark secrets, and the elusive Miss de Vries may not be who she is. What’s more, the women she hired have secrets of their own that could expose their heist. 

Can the Housekeepers fight all odds to pull off the heist? What happens if they are exposed? 

The story comes from the third-person POV of multiple characters. 

What I Like: 

The book has a great atmosphere- a gothic-like house with secrets, all characters with secrets, creepy vibes, complexities in abundance, and loads of things that could go wrong anytime with little margin of error. 

Even with the story having multiple POVs and many characters, it’s easy to track the backstories of all the leading ladies. The limited third-person POV choice keeps things smooth enough (though scene breaks are missing in the ARC). 

The book starts with a bang. The chapters start at the present, move to the past to present the events until the present, and shift between the past and present a few more times. However, I didn’t feel overwhelmed at any point. I didn’t have to go back to track the date. 

The Janes were possibly the best characters in the book. I’d have loved to read more of them. After all, their roles are so crucial to the plot. 

There are a few light moments and a couple of chuckles, with the rest of the book trying to be intense and heavy. The Victorian era is done well, though. Be it the reality behind marriage contracts or the balls, scandals, etc. 

What Could Have Been Better for Me: 

The pacing is slow from start to finish. While it is necessary to establish the setting and characters in the first half, it gets boring in the second half. I started checking how much was left to read, especially when the heist began around the halfway mark. 

The book tries to be too many things at once. It is dark but not dark enough to make readers uncomfortable. It touches on many topics like revenge, greed, envy, money, power, manipulation, control, illegitimacy, loan sharks, abuse of servicewomen, (hinted) flesh trade and kinks, possible Sapphic inclinations, a sort-of romance, female friendships, etc. Except for some, the rest are only hinted at or used to add a twist to the plot. Finally, I ended up not really caring for anything or anyone. 

The heist is the central plot of the book. The reasons are just as important, of course. But if and how the women pull off the heist needs to be compact. While there are some dangers, none of them cause tension or anxiety. The whole thing feels a little too easy. Given the high stakes, it just doesn’t hit the mark. 

With complex characters, desperate times, and danger all around, the book could have been outstanding. It needed intricate plotting and execution. However, we get a mashup of too many things and writing that only skims the surface. The key conversation between Mrs. King and Miss de Vries should have been the highlight but is underwhelming. 

Even with the detailed backstories of the main characters, we don’t know much about them. It’s hard to connect to any of them. There are too many gaps left to the reader’s imagination. I can fill them myself, but that doesn’t enrich the characters. 

The ending fell flat for me. It’s surprising as I prefer such types of endings. However, here, I like only a portion of it. The rest feels a bit too neatly tied up. There’s an attempt to make the ending strong, which didn’t work for me. 

To summarize, The Housekeepers is a decent debut with a great premise that doesn’t reach its full potential. It reads like a debut. No denying the author’s talent, though. I’ll be happy to read more by the author.  

Thank you, NetGalley and Headline Review, for the eARC. 

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