Title: Service

Author: Lauren Mooney

Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Literary Fiction

Publisher: Manilla Press

Publication Date: 25th June 2026

Rating: 4/5

Cover:

Summary:

Danielle MacKinnon’s nearly thirty and still hasn’t got her life sorted. She’s broke, hates her job as PA to the blithely privileged Jeannie, and now a break-up’s left her with nowhere to live. It comes as a surprise when Jeannie suggests that Danielle stay at Westerley, the sprawling Yorkshire estate where she grew up. They need someone to look after the place anyway.

Danielle enjoys the borrowed luxury at first, but the house is strange, uneasy. The sleep paralysis that started in London has followed her there. Then Jeannie arrives unannounced.

Working for Jeannie, serving her, living in her house, the razor-thin boundaries between Danielle and her boss begin to dissolve. Soon their relationship slides into one that is older, stranger and harder to name.

Something is happening at Westerley. Things where they shouldn’t be. The shadow of a maid sweeping in the dawn light. But is the house really haunted? Or is Danielle?

Review:

I was so curious about the whole idea of Service and now, having read it, I think it was executed very well. It’s a sort of hard to categorise but very compelling hybrid of contemporary fiction and slightly gothic ghost story. I would say it’s more quietly unsettling and chilling than full on horror but I think that’s what really works for this strange story which looks at class, privilege, work/life balance, loneliness, and the concept of ‘service’ itself. There’s a sense that the point may be that, when it comes to the whole ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ thing, the more things change, the more they actually stay the same and it makes for a fascinating read. Danielle herself is an interesting main character and I found her narrative voice genuinely intriguing, especially as she seems to start losing time and becomes something of an unreliable narrator. Service is very well written, with a kind of sharpness coupled with a real sense of both wit and unease that creeps off the page at times. It’s also undoubtedly quite chilling, I have always found the condition of sleep paralysis to be genuinely frightening and it is utilised to great effect in Service. I did feel like things started to move very fast as the end of the book sped towards me, and I definitely could have read more because I was sort of captivated by all the haunting strangeness. Overall, I very much enjoyed and would recommend Service, which is strange, unnerving, witty and sharply well observed. 

★★★★

Thank you so much to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for inviting me on this tour and organising it. I kindly received a copy of the book from the publisher. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

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