Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Louise Basset works as a housemaid at The Ritz Hotel, home to the most powerful Nazis in France. As she changes silk sheets and scrubs sumptuous marble bathtubs, she listens and watches, reporting all she can to the Resistance. The only secret she never tells is her own.
Everything changes for Louise on the day a young Allied pilot, hunted by the Nazis, is smuggled into the hotel. As he and Louise share a small carafe of red wine hidden amongst her cleaning bottles, she feels her heart begin to open. But if Louise trusts someone with the truth, what will happen?
Years later, her granddaughter Nicole looks up at the ornate façade of the infamous Paris hotel. She is reeling from her recent discovery: a black-and-white photograph of her grandmother as a young woman, head shaved, branded a traitor. Devastated by her new legacy and about to start a family of her own, Nicole searches for answers.
When a French historian calls Louise by a different name, Nicole realizes there must be more to her grandmother’s story. Was the woman who taught Nicole so much about family and loyalty a resistance fighter, or will her granddaughter have to live with the knowledge that she is descended from a traitor? And will Nicole be able to finally move forward with her life if she can uncover the truth?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Paris Maid to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Paris Maid is the first book I have read by Ella Carey and I really don’t know how this author hasn’t been on my reading radar before as this was such a cleverly crafted story that draws you in right from the brief prologue. Once it has you in its grip it does not relinquish its hold until the final word and along the way you go on such a journey with the characters. Some of the characters that feature in the story are real people that lived and worked in the Ritz Hotel in Paris during World War Two and the end notes providing details of these people were very interesting and made me want to research more about them. I think blending fictional characters with real life people added even more authenticity and drama to the story.
The brief prologue is detailed and descriptive and perfectly sets the scene for what the book will be about. It occurs as Paris is liberated.The French people having been humiliated, oppressed and abused by the Nazi’s occupation of their country are retaliating in a big way. Anyone deemed to have collaborated with the Nazi’s receives punishment. But one women, Louise, still has a secret and one which she is determined will never be shared. My interest was certainly piqued but then we are taken back to London in the present day and from that point on the story is a dual timeline novel moving between the present day and Paris in 1944. In London, Nicole has received a picture from her Aunt Mariah of her grandmother Louise taken in Paris in 1944. It shows her head shaven and her face branded with a swastika. Nicole is shaken to her core and can’t fathom that this is the woman she loved so much and misses so deeply.
Granny Louise couldn’t possibly be a Nazi collaborator. Nicole feels her world has been torn from under her. What do you do if you learned a beloved family member had been accused of something unspeakable and then that leads you to thinking what would other family members think? Nicole wants to know the truth and to redeem her grandmother’s name for surely Louise was not involved in anything like that but the evidence in the photo paints a very different picture. Nicole is pregnant and wants her child to know the truth about the woman she loved most in the world so she travels to Paris to meet with her Aunt Mariah and cousin Pandora. Relations between the family members have been strained but Nicole will insist on getting to the bottom of things.
The chapters move back and forth between the past and present with the past dominating and rightly so. To be honest, I became so engrossed and enraptured by the brilliant story unfolding in the summer of 1944 that at times I completely forgot about Nicole and her quest. At times, it felt a bit jarring to return to the present but thankfully it was only ever briefly and then we got back to Louise’s story which I really couldn’t get enough of. Nicole is the one who forges the link between the two time periods. She is needed in the book but I just wanted to read all about the past as it was so engrossing with memorable characters who live long in your mind.
Louise works as a maid in the opulent and quite frankly fascinating Ritz Hotel in Paris. Alongside Claude, the hotel manager, and his wife Blanche and Frank the bar man, Louise engages in resistance undercover activities. Louise speaks several languages and she is known for being able to memorise facts and numbers very quickly commiting to her memory details that would seem inconsequential to others but do help with the larger picture. She had planned to go to university but the war put paid to that and now she uses her talents to translate codes and messages and their group in the hotel pass on information to the Allies. The world famous Ritz is officially neutral but really people are on one side or another or perhaps both? Louise’s father left when she was 12 and her mother was left to rear Louise and started her own small sewing business. Louise writes to her mother every week but has heard nothing from her and she is now desperate to know whether she is safe or has she fallen into the wrong hands?
Louise was an outstanding character. She always had her wits about her and was filled with such confidence, grit and determination. No one was going to intimidate her and prevent her from doing her undercover work and as she flits from one area to another in the hotel she knows all that is going as Goring resides in one room not to mention all the other Germans who frequent the hotel and the bar. When Sasha arrives as the assistant to the military governor of occupied France and is given a bed in Louise’s room even that does not put her off. Instead, she becomes even more alert because she knows a dangerous and complex game is being played where the stakes are very high. She becomes even more deeply involved in Resistance work but to say much more would just give too much away. Suffice to say her own heritage has a very crucial role to play within the overall plot of the book. Louise, was just such a fabulous character and one of the best female characters I have read in a historical fiction book in a long long time.
Running concurrently with Louise’s story is that of Kit, an American pilot whose crew is shot down over Northern France and who subsequently needs to get back to safety. I was so smug in that I thought I had it all figured out very early on. All the connections seemed to arise too early or it was just far too easy to guess. But boy was I wrong and in the best way possible. I really love having the wool pulled over my eyes and Ella Carey did this so successfully which only added to my overall enjoyment of the book.
The Paris Maid was an impressive story packed full of twists, turns and surprises and it has made me definitely want to read more by Ella Carey. It’s not often these days that I am genuinely surprised by the revelations that occur towards the end of a book but I was in this case. It was so refreshing not to have guessed the ending and to be honest it really was a mind-blowing twist that had me reeling in shock and had me reassessing my opinion of certain characters and their actions. In fact, it made me want to go back to the beginning and start all over again just so I could look for things that I had missed the first time around and perhaps gain an even deeper understanding of all the nuances and work that was done by the people in the Ritz and beyond. The only thing I will say is that I felt the ending was very rushed. The book itself ended at the 82% mark -with the remainder being chapters from a previous book by the author and details of her other books. I found this very disconcerting as I thought that I had a good bit still to go and I wanted this as I was really enjoying the entire story as it is such a page turner.
In my opinion, the ending was just too quick and I admit to getting confused as to who was who and how things worked out. I needed to reread paragraphs several times to ensure I had everything correctly worked out. A little more development and not having the need to tie everything up in a page or two at the conclusion would have been welcome. I wasn’t ready to leave the characters and I felt they had a little bit more to say. But aside from that, The Paris Maid was a brilliant read and it has renewed my faith that the historical fiction can be fresh and innovative as at times it can become repetitive despite how much I love reading books in this genre. It’s a story of raw emotions, heartbreak, courage, secrets and the further it progresses the more difficult it becomes to put down.
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