This was a very clever book about an audacious robbery, a righting of wrongs and women asserting themselves in a world where they have few rights and pass invisible.
Mrs King is planning to take everything from the house of her former employer, and father, a man who was once known as Danny O'Flynn.
Her plan is completely insane and not even her co-conspirators are convinced they can pull it off.
Highly enjoyable as the group of women behind this heist put their plan into place, a lavish ball, someone shouts "fire" and Mrs Bone will put right the terrible things that have been hidden in the house.

I struggled a bit to get into this book at first, I couldn’t quite work out the relationships between characters or what exactly was happening. Once I settled into it I found the idea of a period heist really intriguing and there were a lot of elements I really liked. However, despite a really interesting mix of strong female characters, I never really connected to any of them. I have the feeling I’d love watching this on the telly and get a stronger sense of the women. I did enjoy the effortless writing style and the rich descriptions of the house and the ball and would read more from this author.

The Housekeepers is a brilliantly bonkers story about a handful of female service staff who attempt to pull off a heist to rob a large house on Park Lane of it's entire contents.

Set in 1905, it perfectly captures the glitz and glamour of high society London in that era, with mansions, glamorous clothing, sumptuous food and the wealth that provides it all.

The woman are all strong, likeable characters and the plot moves along at a brilliant pace. It is funny, mysterious and very clever. There are enough twists to keep you guessing and it's a book that had me gripped until the last page. I'm going to be raving about this book for the longest time!

My first 5⭐️ review of 2023.

Thanks to @netgalley @alexhaybooks and @headlinebooks for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

This book!!!! I haven't fallen in love with characters to this level in such a long time. This is a brilliant novel, start to finish, perfectly plotted and with cutting prose and a cast so bonkers - but it all just works perfectly. This book is going to be huge in 2023.

Really enjoyed this! A historical heist – brilliant. Mrs King and her band of women plan and execute the most audacious of robberies on Edwardian Park Lane and I am absolutely here for it. The characters are brilliantly drawn, the setting well described. I’ll be looking forward to future reads from Hay.

Fantastic concept, I was really looking forward to reading this book.
The book is set up well, I was engaged from the first page and found the house, staff characters and story interesting.
Unfortunately it became confusing, I struggled to really follow the story and stay interested. Which is a real shame because basis of a really great book is all there, It just lost me 5/6 chapters in.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Not denying the concept of this sounds brilliant but unfortunately after the first few chapters it lost my interest I found it dragged on and I was skipping pages to get to the end. Could have been brilliant but didn’t cut the mustard for me

Such an interesting read! This was my first 'heist' novel and I absolutely loved it. The story follows Mrs. King, recently let go from her job as Housekeeper for a wealthy family in Mayfair, who decides to return to her criminal roots and take back what she feels she deserves. In this case, Mrs. King feels that she deserves every single one of their possessions.

The characters were brilliant and as another reviewer rightly said, you really do feel for every one of them. The narrative doesn't dwell on their troubled pasts but gives just enough detail that you truly hope they succeed with the plan.

The plot moved at a great pace too, snappy enough to remain tense and page-turning but lingered on specific moments between characters that allow the reader to feel totally immersed. There were some truly unnerving moments (one that springs to mind involved a chandelier!) and I flew through the novel in 24hrs because I had to find out what happened.

Giving this one five stars - pick it up if you are in a reading slump because you won't be able to put it down!

There are three things needed to make the ideal heist story. First, a great ensemble cast, and the capacity to make you care about each member and their individual motivations and angles in a short space of time. Second, a mark who kind of deserves it — no one wants to feel bad for whoever’s being cleared out. And finally, plenty of things that go wrong. Even the best-laid plans fly out the window when applied to a real situation, and a heist where everything goes perfectly just isn’t interesting.

That sounds like a lot to balance, right? But luckily for you, Alex Hay has got this absolutely perfect in The Housekeepers. We have that great ensemble cast, spending more time with some than others, but somehow feeling very quickly like we know them all intimately. Although don’t be fooled, they still have their secrets, and The Housekeepers is full of brilliantly paced twists and reveals. The key players come from London’s criminal underbelly, triggering several comparisons to Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith which I can kind of see. These con artists, through means nefarious and genuine, insinuate themselves into the downstairs servants’ world at a grand house in Mayfair.

This brings us to our deserving mark. ‘Madam’s’ father has recently died, and shamefully soon following Madam wants to throw a ball and put herself out on the marriage market. In Madam, we find a tightly buttoned character, seemingly manipulative and cold, although again there are hidden depths and connections. For these reasons I’m not going to linger too long on her character, but the tensions between Madam and gang leader Mrs King led to some truly electric scenes.

And finally, Things Go Wrong. Again, I can’t (and wouldn’t want to) go into detail here for fear of spoiling this brilliant rollercoaster ride of a book, but there is plenty to keep our gang on their toes.

All of these plot beats are hit perfectly and delivered in Hay’s smooth prose, which seems to effortlessly convey character and emotion. Heist books can be a cold affair, tied up purely in the cleverness of The Plan and its instigators, but The Housekeepers really does deliver on heart as well. I highly recommend for anyone who likes a clever book that’s not absorbed in its own cleverness, and for those who want to care about their characters, despite their dubious, nefarious motives.

A fantastic debut novel by Alex Hay. Think the Oceans 11 set in the Edwardian era. Recently dismissed from her role as Housekeeper, Mrs King sets about leading a mainly female team to offload the house of all its valuable goods. While it may seem that her dismissal spurs this heist it all quickly becomes clear that there is much more to Mrs King's reasons for cleaning out the house! The Housekeepers is full of well-developed and fascinating characters as we learn of each team member's reasons for being involved and also highlights the strength and loyalty of the wonderful female friendships between the characters. Would highly recommend it.

This is an honest review in exchange for an ARC. Thank you NetGalley

The Housekeepers is about a heist in the Edwardian era, dreamt up, planned and executed (mostly) by women in a Park Lane mansion in London. This is a story of revenge, for deeply personal reasons and an attempt to right some wrongs. There are female friendships which tug at the heartstrings and a few love stories too. It’s an absolutely cracking read.

I predict that The Housekeepers will be one of the hits of the year and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s a film or tv series commissioned in the future.

Well done Alex Day on a five star debut novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy.

It’s June 1905 and plans are underway for a ball at the grandest house on London’s Park Lane. Miss de Vries, who has recently inherited the house from her millionaire father, has decided to throw the party of the season to launch herself into society and find a suitable husband. However, someone else also sees the night of the ball as a great opportunity – an opportunity for revenge. She is Mrs King, the former housekeeper, who was dismissed from her job just a few weeks earlier and is now planning a daring heist. On the night of the Park Lane ball, she and a group of other carefully recruited servants will strip the house of its treasures – its artworks, books, furniture, silverware, even the carpets – and Miss de Vries and her guests won’t notice a thing until it’s too late. But will this plan work or will the housekeepers be caught in the act?

The Housekeepers is Alex Hay’s debut novel and I found it an entertaining read. It was fascinating to see how carefully Mrs King and her accomplices plan the heist – preparing inventories of each room, taking measurements, identifying escape routes and making sure nothing is left to chance! Despite their detailed planning, there are still some factors outside their control and a lot of things that could go wrong, so there’s plenty of suspense as we wait to see whether or not they will succeed. As the novel progresses and we learn more about what has been going on behind the doors of the Park Lane house, I found I didn’t have much sympathy for Miss de Vries and was definitely rooting for the servants!

The heist is Mrs King’s idea, but I thought some of the other women she enlists were more interesting characters. These include Mrs Bone, who runs a criminal network but seems to have a moral code of her own, the actress Hephzibah and the two trapeze artist sisters referred to as Jane-one and Jane-two. There’s also Winnie, who held the position of housekeeper before Mrs King, and Alice the sewing maid who is befriended by Miss de Vries and faces a battle with her conscience. I felt that too many characters were introduced too quickly at the beginning of the book, which made things confusing for a while, but I eventually managed to keep them all straight in my mind.

The novel is also an interesting exploration of the class system and the injustice of some people being born into a life of privilege while others are not. In his author’s note, Alex Hay describes the satisfaction of imagining the servants trying to claim some of that privilege for themselves! However, Miss de Vries herself is looked down upon by the people she most wants to impress because she had a father who made his fortune through diamond mining rather than inheriting wealth passed down through the generations.

I thought The Housekeepers was fun to read and with its period setting, portrayal of life above and below stairs, and vividly described heist sequences, I could easily imagine a BBC adaptation. As a first novel it's quite impressive and I'll certainly be looking out for more from Alex Hay!

I loved the idea of an Edwardian heist carried out by a bunch of feisty women. Like all successful heists, the plans and schemes needed to be accurate to the last second. While I enjoyed the book, I found that it was a bit protracted in the middle, but the pace picked up again in the second half. Every woman involved in the heist, had their own reasons for being involved and it was fun to find out why, and who. A good book, I’d recommend it.

I loved this book and couldn’t put it down until I finished it. It’s a rip-roaring tale of deception and a grand heist with fantastic characters and loads of great twists and turns in the plot.
I enjoyed how evocative it was of Victorian times and how many strong women featured throughout.

A brilliant heist novel with feisty female protagonists. There’s twists and turns with family connections. As with many novels the ending was maybe a little laboured but otherwise easy and enjoyable read. Highly recommended. A good summer read as it’s set during a hot June in London .

Alex Hay’s debut novel, ‘The Housekeepers’, is a very good yarn. For those who enjoy a heist movie, this narrative is the bookish equivalent. Hay has clearly done plenty of research on below stairs Edwardian London life and also provides us with details of the upstairs excesses. Strong female characters populate the storyline and, for the most part, they are entirely believable, with the exception perhaps of the circus-trained Janes. Just visualising some of their trapeze type exploits brings an involuntary gasp but this is also a moment to suspend disbelief!
Hay is certainly not afraid to confront the many ways in which working women were abused by their class superiors. Mrs King, a former housekeeper, whose idea it is to pillage the contents of the grand house over which she took charge, wonders, ‘How do we do it…? It almost bewildered her. The bowing and scraping and the chores that made mincemeat of your dignity: carrying trays, answering call-bells. You unravelled yourself, polishing butter knives, waiting for something to happen in your life.’ Whilst this is not a new revelation, the idea that the ‘underclass’ is working to revenge this exploitation and, looking to the future, to provide for victims is empowering and refreshing. Educated, liberal-minded do-gooders do not have a role to play here!
Over the course of the novel, the central characters take stock of what they have suffered and what they might achieve through fighting back. Hephzibar, a fading actress, for example, wakes up to recognise that, ‘Shame was the usual sensation in the mornings. But that day she felt only a faint curiosity, a sort of scientific interest in herself…she was surviving – despite everything.’
This is an enjoyable read and could very well earn a small screen commission. The female characters are wonderful, credible individuals and the themes of power and inequality are always worth exploring. My only caveat is that the depiction of the heist itself is a little over-long and so the story lacks tension towards the end. However, I’ll certainly look out for Alex Hay’s next novel.
My thanks to NetGalley and Headline for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

The House keepers by Alex Hay.
I was really looking forward to reading this book from Alex Hay. The premise got me interested in it. The setting Mayfair 1905. Ex housekeeper Mrs King, planning a heist to strip her ex-employer’s mansion of its fixtures and fittings by using a few women and actors and actresses attending a ball that it is taking place at the mansion.
I liked the premise of this story and found it richly descriptive and atmospheric. It had great characters. But there was a lot of them and sometimes got confused who was who. But halfway through this book I thought it lost its momentum a bit and I started getting a bit disengaged from the story. 3 stars from me.

I will admit I struggled a little with this one. I found it took a long time to get going and I found it hard to be on Mrs Kings side without having an understanding of what was driving her. I found the fairly long drawn out introductions to everyone just weren't that interesting. Its a shame as I loved the idea of this book and I'm sure others will love it but the style just didn't work for me.

Well, I ended up with very mixed feelings about this book. It has a really great premise and masses of characters with lots of depth, from the description it sounds right up my street. A group of women servants seeking revenge for past wrongs by plotting a ludicrously complex burglary but I'm afraid it quickly lost me and I got more and more cofused as it went on ... firstly there are just a few TOO many characters and I kept forgetting who was who in the very complex heirarchy and as the plot thickened, I began groping about in this huge porridge of events and goings on, wondering just who was doing what, to who, where and when and why! The plots twists just weren't clear enough to me, to grasp, it's utterly baffling. There is far too much going on and too many rather pointless subplots and it didn't have the period feel I'd expect.
By the end I was totally confused but stuck with it, in the main because (A) some of the characters are really engaging and I wanted to find out what happened to them, and (B) I was expecting some kind of massive revelation at the end which just didn't come, I'd been drip fed it throughout the book and most of the drips had passed me by and ended up in the morass of murk at the bottom of the pot.
Great idea but far too confusing for me to be satisfied that I kept going way beyond the point I'd normally give up on a book, hoping for a revelation and failing abysmally to find one.

An excellent heist novel, full of pace and lies and secrets and everything that will make you want to turn the page and not go to sleep quite yet...
Reminded me of Lynda la Plante's 'Widows' in many a good way, with the Edwardian splendour or Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs tucked in for good measure.
Recommended in spades.