The Maid's Diary

A Novel

By: Loreth Anne White

Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer

Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

2023 SOVAS Award Finalist for Audiobook Narration—Thrillers, Best Voiceover

A cunning, twisty, and unsettling novel of psychological suspense with a startling conclusion by Loreth Anne White, the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of The Patient’s Secret.

Kit Darling is a maid with a snooping problem. She’s the “invisible girl,” compelled to poke into her wealthy clients’ closely guarded lives. It’s a harmless hobby until Kit sees something she can’t unsee in the home of her brand-new clients: a secret so dark it could destroy the privileged couple expecting their first child. This makes Kit dangerous to the couple. In turn, it makes the couple—who might kill to keep their secret—dangerous to Kit.

When homicide cop Mallory Van Alst is called to a scene at a luxury waterfront home known as the Glass House, she’s confronted with evidence of a violent attack so bloody it’s improbable the victim is alive. But there’s no body. The homeowners are gone. And their maid is missing. The only witness is the elderly woman next door, who woke to screams in the night. The neighbor was also the last person to see Kit Darling alive.

As Mal begins to uncover the secret that has sent the lives of everyone involved on a devious and inescapable collision course, she realizes that nothing is quite as it seems. And no one escapes their past.

©2023 by Cheakamus House Publishing. (P)2023 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

Oppenheimer narrates perfectly!

“The Maid’s Diary” is a satisfying thriller involving a nosy maid and a serial sex-abuser and his enabling wife. I chose the audible version, narrated by the fantastic Jane Oppenheimer. If Oppenheimer is on the project, it’s a good one.

This is a character-driven thriller that keeps the reader/listener invested and guessing. Kit Darling is a maid with a snooping problem. She tells us that she’s invisible, that she drifts into people’s homes, cleaning their messes, learning their secrets in stealth mode. Kit tells her story through her diary entries. Her new shrink has suggested that she write down her thoughts; this might help in finding the reason for her insistent need to snoop. When Kit is assigned to the Rittenberg’s, her snooping goes into overdrive. She knows them from a very long time ago.

Author Loreth Anne White chose to tell her story in alternating timelines. Ground zero is when an elderly neighbor, Beulah, hears a woman’s scream, awakening her from her drug-induced sleep. She looks out her window and sees two people drag a large rolled-up carpet into a car; meanwhile, two clandestine lovers witness two people submerge a car (after throwing into the car what looks like a body) into a river.

Mal (Mallory) Van Alst is the homicide cop who is called to the scene at the luxury waterfront home known as the Glass House. It’s a bloody one. Mal needs to rely on her, what most likely is, an unreliable witness. All she has is one bloody crime scene. Mal doesn’t know how much of the information she gleans from the elderly woman is accurate. Mal tells the story in real time.

Daisy Rittenberg, the enabling wife, provides historical prospective along with what happened two weeks before the bloody crime scene. Daisy in sinister, complex, and manipulative. She’s the perfect ominous character.

John Rittenberg is the sexual predator, an ex-ski Olympian. He and Daisy moved back to their hometown when he’s up for a promotion, CEO at the local ski resort, Terra West. But his promotion becomes dubious which makes him angry. Daisy has her hands full, making her husband happy while heavily pregnant.

White adds a Photographer as a character. From the Photographer we get surreptitious pieces regarding John. The Photographer is another invisible character who adds enormous suspense.

When the story gets to three days before the murder, the tension grows. White even writes it up to 2 hours before the murder. The twists, turns, lies, deception, manipulations and corruption keep the reader/listener engrossed in the story.

White successfully uses various unreliable narrators along with past/present timelines to create a stellar thriller. I consider myself to be an amateur sleuth and generally have a solid idea of how the story will play out. Not on this one. So many diabolical characters!!

I highly recommend the audio. Narrator Jane Oppenheimer is amazing.

Fantastic!

Seriously, who needs a TV with such good audio drama!!!

Fantastic story and brilliant audiobook.

5 Star

I couldn't put it down! This book kept me up late at night! Highly recommend!

Fantastic!

could not put it down. Best thing I have listen to in a while.

Hooked from the first page!

I devoured this book. The performance was brilliant, the storyline had me captivated and the underlying themes and topics were just as good.

You know when you make every effort to sneak in time to continue listening? For just a few chapters more. Well that was me. Loved it. Well deserving of 5 stars.

A virtual page turner

Forget what you think about the Maid. This is a good read and kept me sleepless until the end.

Absolutely Enjoyable!

Character development was intricate and vast. The plot wove between them in interesting and entertaining ways. The narrator was really great too!

Listened to it in one day

I was so hooked on this story I couldn’t take my AirPods out. My husband even heard bits of it from the other room and said it sounded interesting. Highly recommend

Well worth the read!

Thoroughly enjoyed this book although since I didn’t listen straight through, it was just a little difficult keeping track of the characters. Once I was a third of the way through I had them nailed and was able to enjoy the plot. Twisted ending, but good.

pretty good story but slow narrator

I have to admit I was almost to the point where I was like get on with things already but it did have a nice twist. Narrator was very slow so i had to increase the speed of the playback. overall good mystery with a little twist.