wordsofclover's reviews
2085 reviews

Set in dual timelines - 1920s and 2022 - A Maid on Fifth Avenue tells the story of Annie Thornton who sets off for New York from County Kerry to look for a bigger life than the ones lived by her friends and family. As she settles into her new life as a maid for a wealthy family on Fifth Avenue, Annie meets Elena who ends up showing Annie a whole new way of loving someone than she thought possible.

In 2022, Emer is recovering from Covid burnout with a trip back home to her native Ireland and a summer stay at her parents holiday home where she befriends some locals and is brought into some family/local secrets that all end up connected back to Annie.

This was a fine read for me. I liked the emphasis on female friendship at the start of the novel between Annie and May, and then Annie and Noreen, and I thought Annie was a fine young woman, though it has to be said, I found her quite vanilla and boring - the same with Elena and her relationship with Annie. I was happy to see representation of a sapphic relationship in the book but I didn't feel anything for Annie and Elena, there wasn't really any chemistry between them and I thought declarations of love came very quickly. While I sympathised with Elena's situationsahip with her parents and her abusive boss/landlord, I also found her very weak and tiring as she complained to Annie about leaving her and never seeming to try and help her own situation.

I also found Annie's relationship with May at the end of the book very annoying as well - and ultimately I thought Annie's story ended up super depressing in how she put her life on hold, and stopped all of her own dreams to help other people. (view spoiler)

As for the modern part of the story, it was fine but I honestly think it added nothing other than the discovery of bones, and you could have had that bit as just an aside at the start and end of the books without actually having a 2022 storyline at all. I found some of the tensions between Emer and other characters just very odd- especially with Siobhan, and then the way Cian's story ended was very all over the place and didn't make much sense to me either as to character motivations. 

Maude Horton is determined to avenge her sister Constance, who died on board an Arctic exploration disguised as a ship's boy. Questions around Constance's death plague Maude, as does the man who seems to have been responsible for it. Maude ends up getting closer to the man himself, Edison Stowe, armed with her arsenal of apothecary tinctures and medicines, to get the truth and justice for her sister.

I really liked the premise of this book - and I also enjoyed the time setting this was based in, the mid 1800s with a focus on the public fascination with hangings and other public executions. However, I think the overall story and execution of the plot was a bit disappointing - a story of a sister taking revenge on her sibling's murderer should be juicy and tense, and I felt like the story was flat and lacking in these aspects. I didn't really like that we got so much of Edison's POV as it took away from Maude's journey and therefore we didn't get some scenes that could have been really good in her perspective, but got a little run down of why it had happened instead from her when we switched back. The fact Maude is a chemist and knows her tinctures should have been a really big part of the story but it just wasn't, it was so disappointing.

This book didn't quite deliver to me the story I wanted, and unfortunately it's the second time a Lizzie Pook book has done this to me. I think in terms of historical setting and premise, she writes very well but the actual execution of the plot, the building up and connection with the characters always fall short for me. She tends to have really gorgeous covers that don't end up matching the inside of the book.